Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki will not attend the Ukraine Recovery Conference taking place in Gdańsk this week, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk did not send him invitations to the event co-hosted with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The announcement came Monday from Marcin Przydacz, head of the Presidential Bureau of International Policy, during a press conference in Warsaw. Invitations to foreign partners were issued jointly by Tusk and Zelensky, with Przydacz confirming that neither Nawrocki nor any officials from his office received one.
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“The president was not invited, so he will not go,” Przydacz said, adding that no officials subordinate to the president would attend either.
Poland president sidelined
The conference, held Thursday and Friday in Gdańsk, brings together leaders, ministers and investors interested in financing Ukraine’s reconstruction. Poland is this year’s host of the annual event, which has previously been held in Berlin, Rome, London and Lugano.
Przydacz has criticized Tusk, expressing hope that he will focus on “the interest of Poland, rather than just raising money for Zelensky” at the conference.
He described recent comments from senior Ukrainian officials as “an expression of deep ingratitude toward Poland and the Polish people” and called accusations of pro-Russian sentiment against Poles “simply audacious,” given Warsaw’s extensive political, financial, military and humanitarian support for Ukraine since the beginning of full-scale invasion in 2022.
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Ukraine–Poland diplomatic fallout
The diplomatic rift between the two neighbors escalated after Ukraine’s decision to grant a military unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.”
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was a nationalist partisan force that fought during and after World War II for an independent Ukrainian state. While many Ukrainians view the group as part of the country’s struggle for independence, Poland considers the UPA responsible for mass killings of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during the war.
Nawrocki responded June 19, by stripping Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor, saying the move was “not against the Ukrainian people” and expressing that the move did not signal a shift in Poland’s support for Ukraine.
On June 20, Zelensky returned the decoration, with three former presidents – Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko – renouncing the same Polish honor, while Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Presidential Office chief Kyrylo Budanov and Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland also gave back their Polish state decorations.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated that a decision regarding Ukraine’s participation in the June 25-26 Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk will be made on Monday following a briefing with Zelensky on June 21.
Przydacz added that Ukraine had also withdrawn from a scheduled meeting between the two presidents in Warsaw, offering a distant alternative date, which Poland framed as him not being “interested in a real dialogue with the Polish president.”
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