Alexander J. Motyl has been awarded the medal named after Jan Karski, the Polish World War II underground courier who carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the world in the 1940s. In its citation, the Warsaw-based Jan Karski Society said that the medal is in recognition of Motyl’s “consistent defining of the political system in Putin’s Russia in an analogy to Hitler’s fascism,” as well as his “ruthless exposing the truth about about the criminal character of Russian totalitarianism and its dictator.”

Last year, soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Motyl wrote that President Volodymyr Zelensky “will go down in history as a new type of Ukrainian patriot who fought for his homeland’s freedom.” Motyl also said at the time that  Zelensky “may deserve to be considered Ukraine’s George Washington.”

A presentation ceremony for the medal, marking the 75th anniversary of Karski‘s WWII mission, is due to be held in New York later this year.