The initiative to strip Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Order of the White Lion is, according to the head of the Czech diplomatic office Petr Macinka, a political gesture by the coalition party "Freedom and Direct Democracy" (SPD), reports UNN citing Radio Prague.
"There is no legal way to do this, I would not have proposed it myself," Macinka told journalists.
The party "Freedom and Direct Democracy" announced that it intends to propose at a coalition meeting to strip Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of the highest state award – the Order of the White Lion. The party intends to vote on the proposal in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament.
The head of the PRO party from the SPD parliamentary faction, Jindřich Rajchl, told journalists that this should happen following the example of Poland, where President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle in response to the Ukrainian leader naming a unit of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces after the "Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army."
"We cannot remain silent when our highest state order is held by a person who names military units after Nazi monsters," Jindřich Rajchl stated.
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Volodymyr Zelensky received the highest award in the form of the Order of the White Lion in October 2022. The main reason for the award, then-Czech President Miloš Zeman cited at the time as "his bravery and courage with which Zelensky rejected the American offer to provide him with safe haven and remained in Kyiv, which was fighting at that time" after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.