Guests to Tenants to Irritants

A common wisdom, supported by some proverbial psychologists, claims that a good guest should not bother their hosts longer than three days. After that he should either leave – or fully formalize his relation with hosts as a tenant. 

Ukrainian refugees who flooded Poland en mass in the first weeks of the all-out Russian invasion, have already spent more than three years with their Polish hosts, and most of them formalized their relations with Polish ‘landlords’: found the jobs (mostly unpopular among Poles), paid the taxes (more than the Polish government spends on the refugees) and did their best to learn the language (even though the languages, Ukrainian and Polish, are so close that any Pole with some experience and goodwill could also basically understand Ukrainian).

This did not help much, however. The opinion surveys carried out independently by the Mieroszewski Center in February and December 2024 and, recurrently, by CBOS (Center for the Study of Public Opinion) indicated a dramatic decline of Polish sympathy, empathy and solidarity with Ukrainians in all possible terms. Only 53% of respondents supported acceptance of Ukrainian refugees (40% oppose it) – a sea change since 2022 when the overwhelming majority of Poles (94% vs. 2%) welcomed Ukrainians, or even since 2015-2018 when 56-60% of respondents supported the open door policy. The latest CBOS poll (September 2025) revealed further deterioration of Polish attitudes toward Ukrainians: support for hosting Ukrainian refugees has dropped since January from 53% to 48%, while opposition has reached the record high of 45%.

Far Right on the March

The five-percent change within a mere eight months not only reflects the general downward trend of the past three years but also a harmful impact on the public opinion of the presidential election campaign where at least three major candidates played an openly anti-Ukrainian card. This is true, alas, not only about the far-right leader of “Confederation” Sławomir Mentzen (15% of vote in the first round) and neo-fascist leader of “Polish Crown” Grzegorz Braun (pronounced “brown”, 6% of vote) but also the former head of the notorious Institute of National Memory Karol Nawrocki who ultimately won in the second round against his liberal rival Rafał Trzaskowski – thanks to the decisive help of Mentzen’s and Braun’s voters.

Little surprise that one of his first steps after assuming office (on August 6) was vetoing (on August 25) the government bill that extends welfare assistance for Ukrainian refugees. The decision was predictably cheered by nationalists but criticized by the experts and condemned vehemently by liberals. The most resonant perhaps was the Open letter of Polish women to the president, prime minister, Sejm, and Senate. Signed, in particular, by the former first ladies Danuta Wałęsa, Jolanta Kwaśniewska, and Anna Komorowska, as well as by many female celebrities like Olga Tokarczuk, Agnieszka Holland, and Krystyna Janda, it called on politicians, in a strong emotional language, not to misuse helpless women and children who escape Russian terror, in their populist games. They addressed in particular the favorite tool of today’s Polish nationalists – reigniting historical disputes with cynical political calculation. The memory should not be a stick, the signatories averred. “A state that resorts to facile symbols instead of healing the wounds of history does not build community. A state cannot be street theater. A serious state chooses responsibility over political spectacle: procedures, clear communication, protection of the most vulnerable”.

The protests did work: the law, though with some amendments, was ultimately approved and assistance for refugees extended for another half a year, like in most EU countries. But the harm caused by Polish nationalists to both Polish and Ukrainian societies, and to Polish-Ukrainian relations looks so far irreparable. Only 30% of Poles expressed sympathy for Ukrainians in January – a 10% decline just within one year (and 21% down since 2022), while 38% expressed antipathy (8% within one year, and 21% up since 2022). Of all European nations explored by the survey, Ukrainians are assessed most negatively, above only Roma and (since 2014) Russians, roughly on par with Turks, Chinese, Belarusians and, ironically, Germans – other victims of Polish historical resentments. 

Nearby and Apart

Despite the fact that Ukrainians have lived in Poland for several years and some of them for several decades, being increasingly integrated in Polish society, the social distance between them and Poles is not diminishing but, on the contrary, seems to steadily grow. Just within one year, the number of Poles who know (or, rather, confess they know) a Ukrainian person declined from 66% to 61%; the number of Poles who have a friend or friends from Ukraine fell down from 15% to 11%, and the number of those who sometimes participate
in cultural and other events in Poland related to Ukraine shrank from 14% to 9%. 

Even more worrisome is a minor change of opinion about Ukrainians (just within less than a year): the positive view decreased from 25 to 23%, while the negative increased from 27 to 30%. Even though most Poles still consider Ukrainians in neutral terms (45% defined them primarily as “neighbors” in February, and 47% in December), the general shift is clearly negative: 14% of respondents consider Ukrainians as “enemies” (up from 12%), while only 6% see them as “allies” (down from 8%), and a further 6% see them as “friends” or “brothers/sisters” (down from 8%). Now, only 47% of respondents (down from 53%) consider a marriage between a family member and a person from Ukraine acceptable.

The changes may look incremental and insignificant (and the experts from the government-funded Mieroszewski Center downplay them exactly this way) but, taken together, they indicate a very clear and dangerous downturn in Polish-Ukrainian relations. It apparently goes beyond random personal mistrust and animosity, and portends very serious political implications. In the same Mieroszewski’s December-2024 survey, only 23% of respondents believed that Ukraine and Poland have shared interests while 36% denid it and 42% (sic) are not sure. Only 42% of respondents (down from 47% a year earlier) supported Ukraine’s EU membership, 59% (down from 62%) supported Ukraine’s post-war accession to NATO, and 49% (down from 54%) supported military aid to Ukraine. The most disturbing is probably the emergence of 14% of Poles who considered Russia’s victory as a preferable outcome of the war because it would arguably stabilize the situation in the region.

All these changes are certainly not exceptional and unique to Poland. The same trends can be discerned in many more countries where people are tired with a seemingly endless war, frustrated with a reckless waste of resources, and upset with psychologically uncomfortable reports on daily killings that nobody dares to stop. The victim who loses and perishes evokes empathy because it is safe and honorable to express condolences. But the victim who fights and bleeds and does not give up is a nuisance, a killjoy, an irritant; they provoke outsiders to act, to engage, to do something besides the expression of condolences. All humans prefer to avoid troubles; Poles are exceptional here only in one regard: in 2022, they demonstrated a spectacular, just incredible level of solidarity and support for the beleaguered neighbors. 

Three years later, the situation is reversed: Poles seem to show more hostility toward Ukrainians nowadays than any other nation in Europe. Nowhere else are Ukrainians so afraid to speak Ukrainian in public under the plausible threat of being insulted or even beaten by hyper-patriotic natives. Nowhere else are cars with Ukrainian plates damaged and sprayed so often. Nowhere else are shop windows with Ukrainian signs and symbols smashed so coherently and systemically, and are Ukrainian flags pulled down and put on fire – a favorite performance of notorious Grzegorz Braun, who proudly enjoys immunity as a member of parliament and the preferable presidential candidate of 1,2m patriotic Poles. Not all of them probably do the same but barely any of them abhor his behavior. Even in Germany where the Kremlin’s fifth column has deep historical roots, a strong social-demographic background, and a massive representation in the Bundestag, anti-Ukrainian excesses are not so widespread, and the internet is not so overwhelmed with hatred and scorn.

The decline ub support for Ukraine and Ukrainians can be explained: human beings have natural limits of sheer attentiveness, let alone of empathy and generosity. What is surprising in the Polish case is the speed and the scale of the change: it is not just indifference, or boredom, of fatigue that we observe toward Ukraine elsewhere but anger, irritation and even aggressiveness from a substantial part of society. In all other countries, ethnically motivated attacks on Ukrainians are very rare and carried out, in most cases, not by natives but by fellow refugees from the so-called Global South or, unsurprisingly, by Russians.

Love Thy Neighbor

Yes, there are too many Ukrainians in Poland – more than in any other European country (beside Czechia, in relative terms), and not all of them are as diligent, cultured, and perfectly law-abiding and their hosts would like them to be. But they are neither beggars nor robbers, they take underpaid unprestigious jobs that Poles are reluctant to do, they have 69% employment rate – the highest in the EU, much higher than the employment of Poles in Poland (56%), produce reportedly 2.7% of Polish GDP and pay about €4 bln in taxes. The focus-group interviews published by Mieroszewski Center indicate that the Poles who have the first-hand experience with Ukrainians (as community members or partners or co-employees) praise them usually as “reliable, friendly, hardworking, honest, entrepreneurial, eager to help”. And this largely determines their attitude to Ukraine and the Polish aid: 

“We are helping them because they’re our neighbors. How would they manage without us? After all, the war isn’t over yet”; “As long as the war continues, we have to help them. These people have lost everything, and we are closer than anyone else, so it’s only natural that we’ve got the biggest role to play”; “We cannot take away their identity. Ukraine is fighting a war for its identity, and we should help them preserve it, not force them to assimilate”; “Thanks to them, our society is becoming more open. They bring something that we didn’t have before, and that could be beneficial for us”; “Working and living together with Ukrainians shows that diversity can be a strength. This gives us a chance to grow”.

But this is from a tiny fraction of Polish society, while the majority source their knowledge about Ukrainians either from randomly meeting them in public spaces (public transport, stores, hospitals, government offices) or, worse, from mass media and all kinds of rumors, including the most toxic ones – on the web. They reinforce all the stereotypes, candidly shared by focus groups: 

“It seems that Poles are now being relegated to the back burner. Ukrainians get more assistance than we do, but we are the ones living here, we pay taxes, we work our whole lives.”; “At first, I felt very sorry for them, but now I’m angry with them because it seems that we’re bearing more costs of this war than they are”; “Politicians should finally start thinking about us Poles. Aid to Ukraine is important, but we cannot be paying more than the rest of Europe”; “I get the impression that Poland is taking on more than its fair share. Other EU countries should get more involved”; “I’d like support to be more balanced. Poland is doing a lot, but what do we get in return?” [the italics are mine. – M.R].All these statements are false. There is no data supporting them, just shameless unscrupulous propaganda targeting people’s basic instincts. One may blame Russian trolls who have learned to how to perfectly manipulate Polish great-power complexes, historical traumas, and anti-Ukrainian resentment, but the sad truth is that they would not succeed so spectacularly without active support from Polish far-right politicians and the benign neglect (a.k.a. tacit approval) of their liberal opponents. The average Pole who repeats the media mantra about “ungrateful Ukrainians” who arguably “have never thanked us for what we’ve done”, does not usually communicate with real Ukrainians, nor do they follow the statements of Ukrainian politicians or check the recurrent opinion surveys that indicate Ukrainians’ high respect and gratitude for Poles – against all odds. The average Pole relies mostly on what they hear from friends, from colleagues, from Russian trolls and all kinds of local brown shirts. And Polish liberals, primarily politicians, do not fight back because they know that it is more beneficiary, in the short run, to flirt with nationalistic and xenophobic feelings than to oppose them. 

Wake-up Call

The first alarm bell probably rang in 2023 when the so-called Polish farmers, with Russian flags and slogans “Putin, please come and make order!”, blockaded the Polish-Ukrainian border protesting against the transport of Ukrainian grain that allegedly flooded the Polish market. In fact, the grain was exported to other countries, primarily via Baltic ports, and if there were any diversions from the agreed routes and transfers, it was up to the Polish authorities to investigate the presumed violations, to punish transgressors, and assuage public anxiety about the issue. This is what the rule of law stipulates and what the more Europeanized Polish government was supposed to teach less “advanced” Ukrainians in practice. Instead, they preferred to do nothing, allowing the “farmers” to not only block lifeline routes for the bleeding country but to pour grain from several trucks onto the road – sheer banditry in the eyes of Ukrainians who know how difficult is to collect grain from the mined fields in southern Ukraine and transport it under Russian bombs.

But the major defeat of Polish liberals by the nationalistic far-right has occurred in the realm of national history, and the latest electoral victory of Karol Nawrocki, an ultranationalist former head of the Institute of National Memory, epitomized and summed up this defeat. It was not an instant development: Polish liberals, including historians, gradually lost ground to nationalists, allowing them tacitly to erode the principles of academic honesty and impartiality, and undermine the precious legacy of Jerzy Giedroyc’s “Kultura” and Jacek Kuron’s “Solidarity”. The tragic events of 1944 in Volyn where Ukrainian nationalists carried out ethnic cleansing of Polish colonists, were turned into the focal point of the new Polish martyrological history, outweighing even Nazi crimes, not to mention the Katyn massacre of Polish POWs, now nearly completely forgotten.

It is certainly up to the Poles what they consider the central point of their history and which events to commemorate, but the “Volynian massacre” (or “Volynian tragedy”, as Ukrainians prefer to call it) have cast a long and very noxious shadow on the whole history of Polish-Ukrainian relations and, regretfully, on their present level. A hideous WWII drama that occurred eight decades ago in the eastern region of Poland under Nazi occupation is turned nowadays by Polish nationalists into a sacred unchallenged narrative where Poles, as the liberal Gazeta wyborcza sarcastically comments, are presumed to be “angels by nature” who “did not kill anyone – and even if they killed Ukrainians, it was only in self-defense… Nobody is bothering with the details that it was Polish citizens [of different ethnicities] who killed Polish citizens”. All the government rhetoric and memory politics boldly imply that “we should remember only the ethnic Polish victims of the massacre, but not the Ukrainian or Jewish victims – although they were also citizens of the Second Polish Republic”.

Karol Nawrocki’s victory in presidential election does not bode well for Polish-Ukrainian relations – not only because of his record at the Institute of National Remembrance and some peculiarities of his personality, but also because his victory indicates some serious problems with Polish society, crudely and perhaps excessively characterized by liberal publicist Slawomir Sierakowski as “fascism at the gate”. Shortly after the scandalous vetoing of the law on assistance for Ukrainian refugees, President Nawrocki submitted to parliament amendments to the law on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation and the Criminal Code that would criminalize what the document calls “dissemination of false claims concerning crimes committed by members and collaborators of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Bandera faction, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as well as other Ukrainian formations collaborating with the Third German Reich, in particular the crime of genocide committed against Poles in Volhynia”.

Besides the unilateral and arbitrary definition of “genocide” (the past Polish governments preferred to use the term “ethnic cleansing”, more precise legally and basically indisputable among historians), the document falsely implies that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) “collaborated” with Germans – even though it was actually hunted by Nazis as much as the Polish AK (Home Army), and introduces very vague –  from a legal point of view – notions of “false claims” and their “dissemination”. Dozens of Ukrainian historians signed an open letter to the Polish president, government and parliament, accusing them of a biased, one-sided approach to complex historical developments, of placing them out of a broader historical and geopolitical context, and of trying to shirk their responsibility for that situation, putting all the blame exclusively on Ukrainians.

Bumpy Road Ahead

To historians’ credit, they refrained from having a confrontational tone, putting instead the emphasis on the need for political and professional dialogue (among historians) and a deeper look at both historical and social-political roots of the Volynian tragedy. It is time to pay due attention not only to the xenophobic ideology of Ukrainian interwar “integral” nationalists but also to three centuries of Polish colonization of Ukrainian land and “apartheid” against Ukrainians (as well as Jews and other minorities) in interwar Poland. So far, the latter issues are not discussed in Poland as this heavily skews historical debates on the Polish side, where Poles assume the role of impeccable prosecutors in a martial court. In the latest opinion survey, as many as 43% of respondents (up from 37% a year earlier, with 44% undecided) believe that Ukrainians should feel guilty with respect to Poles because of some historical events, while only 9% among the same respondents (54% undecided) recognize that Poles may also feel guilty with respect to Ukrainians because of some events in their convoluted history.

And the picture is not just grim – the entire dynamics of public opinion within the past few years is ominous and hardly favorable for a possible dialogue and reconciliation. Ukrainians, luckily, do not engage much in this mutual quasi-historical bashing and refrain from ‘symmetric’ responses. It is probably not a sign of greater civic maturity or historical consciousness but, rather, a reflection of the fact that the “Volynian tragedy” and all the related events do not occupy so much space in their historical consciousness. For most of them, it was something that happened outside Ukraine, in the neighboring state, long ago – nearly as far back as Cossack uprisings, with their own tragic excesses (that do not cancel, nonetheless, Cossack heroes in today’s Ukraine). But a more plausible explanation dwells in sheer pragmatism. Ukrainians are engaged in a war of survival with a deadly enemy who strives to annihilate them as a nation, and they are certainly more concerned with the daily massacres carried out by Russian troops, Russian drones and missiles, than with something that happed eighty years ago in a remote and still little known land.In September this year, 74% of Ukrainian respondents declared their positive attitude to Poland and only 20% were negative (in April, as many as 88% of respondents had a positive attitude and only 9% were negative, – the election campaign and President Nawrocki’s eventual moves contributed to a notable deterioration of these and many other indices but they still remain strongly positive). It is striking in particular if compared with Poles’ predominantly negative views of Ukraine and Ukrainians. This mood will probably not affect much Polish policy vis-à-vis Ukraine since even ardent Polish nationalists feel the raison d’etat and understand the vital important of an independent Ukraine for their own security. But the average Ukrainians, and Ukrainian refugees in particular, will probably feel the full wrath of new-old Polish xenophobic nationalism, released carelessly like a genie from historical bottles.