“If we have diplomacy, then I expect it to be maintained for a reason. If the entire Polish state suddenly becomes agitated because President Zelensky signed a decree naming a unit after the ‘heroes of the UPA,’ then why are we becoming agitated only now, when this is already the fifth decree? And everyone is playing dumb, pretending they only found out now,” Katarzyna Gójska, deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Polska, asked on the programme Rewolwer.
On Thursday and Friday, the Ukraine Recovery Conference was held in Gdańsk.
The event took place in the shadow of strained relations between Poland and Ukraine, triggered by the actions of Volodymyr Zelensky and the naming of one Ukrainian military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA.” As a result, Polish President Karol Nawrocki decided to strip Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, which he had received in 2023. In a further reaction, some Ukrainian politicians returned their Polish decorations, while some Polish politicians returned Ukrainian decorations.
Sadovyi’s interests
Another shadow was cast over the event by the Lviv Resilience Day initiative, organised in Gdańsk by the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi.
“We secured EUR 2.5 million in support for Lviv and concluded six agreements with foreign partners,” Sadovyi announced on Wednesday on X. The agreements he referred to were signed with entities from Lithuania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden and France. No Polish companies or institutions were included in that group.
Sadovyi’s presence in Gdańsk was commented on during one press conference by PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who noted that “Sadovyi’s very presence is a demonstration by Ukraine of what relations with Poland are supposed to look like.”
Kaczyński called the mayor of Lviv “an obvious Banderite” and a man who “does not pay a Polish company for work carried out.”
Sadovyi stated that “because of the failure to fulfil obligations, the city was forced to withdraw from the contract” with the company and announced legal action “over such baseless accusations.”
“The mayor of Lviv is threatening Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS, with a lawsuit, a man who, at the most difficult moment of the war, stood on the side of Ukraine, not calculation and cowardice? This is a disgrace, this is a scandal,”
former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki commented.
Polish company sidelined
In March, the Lviv City Council announced that the Lviv municipal company Green City had sent Polish company Control Process S.A. a notice of termination of the contract for the construction of a municipal waste processing complex. According to the Polish company, the Ukrainian counterparty has no grounds to withdraw from the contract. The company also stated that the disputed issues had been the subject of rulings under FIDIC arbitration procedures, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers. Control Process vice-president Tomasz Wiatr told PAP (Polish Press Agency) that he “expects international contracts to be respected” and hopes for a swift change in the decision of the mayor of Lviv, allowing construction work to be completed.
“We condemn the actions of the Lviv authorities toward the Polish company, and we consider the disregard for the findings of international arbitration unacceptable,” Maciej Wewiór, spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote on social media.
Sadovyi responded to his post in a brazen manner.
“Before you start commenting on the matter of the Polish company in Lviv, I would advise you to familiarise yourself at least a little with its essence. And to begin with, please kindly make available this ‘finding of international arbitration’ that you are talking about,”
the mayor of Lviv stated.
“One must be uncompromising, vigilant and clever”
Today, the issue was raised on TV Republika’s Rewolwer programme.
Katarzyna Gójska, deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Polska, said that she “would not call Sadovyi a Banderite.”
“He is a repulsive cynic who has behaved terribly for years. In my view, he has no convictions whatsoever apart from simply detesting Poles. He is a very anti-Polish man, which he has proved in relatively straightforward situations, concerning, for example, churches in Lviv. He held himself back somewhat after the outbreak of the war, but anyone who knows him could see how much that restraint cost him,”
she said.
She added that, in her understanding, foreign policy is primarily about interests.
“Emotions are between people, but when there are only emotions between states and nothing follows from them. Emotions may be a tool, but at the end there is always the question: ‘What do we get out of it?’ I see incredible ineffectiveness, that is all. Now, under this government, it is disintegrating, but I also see the ineffectiveness of the previous government. If we have diplomacy, then I expect it to be maintained for a reason. If the entire Polish state suddenly becomes agitated because President Zelensky signed a decree naming a unit after the ‘heroes of the UPA,’ then why are we becoming agitated only now, when this is already the fifth decree? And everyone is playing dumb, pretending they only found out now,”
Katarzyna Gójska said.
She recalled the decree signed by Volodymyr Zelensky a few days after the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, on July 14, 2025. Under that decree, the 31st Separate Mechanized Brigade was named after UPA Lieutenant General Leonid Stupnytskyi, pseudonym Honcharenko, chief of staff of UPA-North.
“Two or three days after the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, one of the Ukrainian military units was given as its patron a man who was chief of staff of UPA-North, meaning those who operated in Volhynia. The main criminal was Klym Savur [real name Dmytro Kliachkivsky], and Stupnytskyi was chief of staff. He has been the patron of that unit for almost a year, and no one paid attention to it, no one was bothered by it. Moreover, there is a story that most of the orders to murder Poles were given ‘by word of mouth,’ but there are in fact several orders signed by the hand of that criminal. No one noticed this. If we are to be effective, we cannot wake up every now and then, take offence and have spasms. One simply has to be uncompromising, consistent, vigilant and clever from the very beginning,”
editor Gójska concluded.