The Polish government believes that Navrotsky wanted to derail the reconstruction conference — Onet
The Polish government is convinced that Polish President Karol Nawrocki deliberately announced the decision to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle immediately before the start of the Conference on the Reconstruction of Ukraine.
Representatives of the executive branch view this move as a calculated political maneuver intended to disrupt an important international event and demonstrate the incompetence of Donald Tusk’s current government.
According to senior officials, Nawrocki sought to artificially escalate tensions in bilateral relations with Ukraine in order to derail the visit of the Ukrainian delegation at the highest level.
The timeline and exact timing of the announcement of this decision clearly point to political motives on the part of the Polish President’s Office. This decision sparked deep outrage within the Polish Cabinet, where preparations for the summit had been underway for a long time.
“Navrotsky clearly wanted to provoke tension in relations with the Ukrainians and the cancellation of Zelenskyy’s visit to the conference in Gdańsk. That is why he announced the revocation of the order a week before the conference,” said a source in the Polish Prime Minister’s Office.
The Gdańsk conference, scheduled for Thursday and Friday, has been actively promoted on the international stage for several months. A dozen or so heads of state and government are expected to attend, and official delegations are set to arrive from more than 50 countries around the world.
Key participants are expected to include, among others, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Council President António Costa, and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.
Politically, such broad representation of European leaders is extremely disadvantageous for Karol Nawrocki and the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party.
It directly contradicts their domestic political narrative that EU countries are ignoring Prime Minister Donald Tusk and that he himself allegedly has no real influence on international negotiations regarding Ukraine’s future.
The portal’s sources within the government also drew attention to the specific chronology of domestic events.
“All last week, the ‘Civic Coalition’ had to deal with a scandal at the Southern Hospital in the capital. And on Friday evening, Nawrocki suddenly—after two weeks of delay—announced that he was stripping Zelenskyy of the most important Polish order, awarded by President Andrzej Duda after the war began. This overshadowed the medical scandal; in other words, from the right’s perspective, it was a politically illogical move,” sources in the Polish government note.
An additional source of dissatisfaction for representatives of “PiS” and the incumbent president is the government’s success in the defense sector.
A major problem for the opposition was their failure to block Poland’s participation in the European SAFE arms financing program, which will bring the Cabinet of Ministers additional political dividends.
Tusk’s opponents view this as a personal defeat.
This was reported by the Onet portal, citing its own confidential sources in Polish government circles.
Poland issued an ultimatum to Zelenskyy to retain his order
Poland has tightened checks on Ukrainians; there have been cases of denial of protection
