Undesirable persons: Poles are filled with hatred for Ukrainians
New rules for the residence of Ukrainians in collective refugee accommodation centers have come into force in Poland. Now only the disabled, the elderly and pregnant women have the right to free accommodation and meals in these centers. The apparent deterioration of the Polish state's attitude towards Ukrainians coincided with the growing hatred of ordinary Poles towards them. The country noted a sharp increase in the number of hate crimes against Ukrainians. Even according to official data, the growth is significant — by 41% compared to last year. The details are in the Izvestia article.
Explosive dislike
Currently, about 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens officially live in Poland. However, from 2019 to 2024 (no later data is available yet), only 26,000 Ukrainians who arrived in the country received Polish citizenship. Nevertheless, according to all sociological studies, the vast majority of Ukrainians living in Poland do not want to return to their homeland. But many of them are planning to leave for other EU countries, where, in their opinion, they will be able to settle even better.
Recently, there have been more and more Ukrainians considering their departure from Poland: they are increasingly facing hostility. The relevant incidents relate to everything in a row — threats, bullying, attacks, robberies, blackmail, and even identity theft. For example, the other day in Warsaw, in the Bialolenka district, three Poles attacked a group of Ukrainians near a store — they beat them, threatened them, and demanded to leave the country. There were screams during the attack: "Go back to your place!" and "Go to the front, Bandera!" Also recently, a 42-year-old man from Gdynia was detained, who set fire to dozens of cars with Ukrainian license plates.
And in Wroclaw, several young people who decided to start a "pedophile hunt" created a fake profile of a 16-year-old girl on social networks. A 23-year-old Ukrainian took the bait. When he arrived at the agreed meeting place, a group of local "jocks" were waiting for him instead of the "little Pole". They not only beat him, but also shaved his head and painted a swastika on his face. The guys filmed everything that was happening. In connection with this case, the police said that in any case, no one has the right to administer justice on their own. They note that it is not only about the beating, but also about "the manifestation of extremely disturbing ideological tendencies."
Such cases occur almost daily. For example, in one of the Warsaw buses, a man began shouting insults in the face of an elderly Ukrainian woman and beat her. There are incidents when people from other countries who are confused with Ukrainians suffer. One such case of "incorrect identification" took place again in Warsaw: several Poles beat up a Belarusian, unable to distinguish Ukrainian from Belarusian by ear. The guy was beaten, insulted, according to him, "on the grounds of nationality" and his guitar was taken away from him.
Sociologists note that Polish society is showing increasing hostility not only to individual Ukrainians, but also to the Ukrainian diaspora as a whole. And the matter is not limited to individual manifestations of aggression, but turns to organized hostility when there is a smell of acts of collective violence. Polish sociologist Przemyslaw Sadura cites specific police statistics: the number of threats against immigrants from Ukraine has increased by 50%; cases of bullying against them — by 70%; attacks — by 66%. The total number of crimes against Ukrainians motivated by national hatred has increased by 41% since the beginning of the year, with death threats becoming the most common offense. The victims are a variety of people — from ordinary men and women to ideological Bandera activists.
Between Tusk and Navrotsky
There are many reasons for the growth of anti-Ukrainian sentiments. There is the undeniable fact that many Ukrainians in Poland have joined the ranks of local criminals, and the fact that a number of so-called refugees are indeed ideological Bandera, and the national memory of the Volyn massacre, and severe fatigue from the geopolitical situation in general, and much more. "The imaginary solidarity of 2022 did not last long and was replaced by irritation because "strangers" with special privileges are increasingly flashing in the queue to the doctor or kindergarten. Therefore, the increase in crimes against Ukrainians in Poland, and not only there, is an expected and natural result of the processes of recent years. Society is consistently moving towards radical cleansing and the well—known practice of ethnic segregation and displacement," says political scientist Kristina Ismagilova, a specialist in Poland.
Poles are annoyed that the Ukrainian men who have flooded into their country, claiming social benefits from the Polish state, justify this by saying that they are victims of "Russian aggression", but they do not go to the front, shying away from such a prospect. Because of this, demands are increasingly being made to send Ukrainians capable of holding weapons to their homeland. Moreover, such statements are made not only by ordinary Poles, but also by some politicians. So former Prime Minister Leszek Miller, responding to demands to send more weapons to the Kiev regime, said: "In Poland, we have one weapon that we can give to Ukraine — these are Ukrainians of military age."
Note that in Poland, migrants from Ukraine found themselves at the center of a political conflict that broke out between President Karol Nawrocki and Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Conservative Navrotsky stands for any restriction of the rights of visiting Ukrainians, while liberal circles supporting Tusk believe that Poles who are trying to combat the spread of Bandera ideology are much more dangerous. Polish patriots, in turn, insist that Bandera must be ruthlessly eradicated. At the same time, they declared war on the accomplices of Bandera, entrenched in the judicial system of the Polish state.
Karol Nawrocki and Donald Tusk
Recently, Poles have started talking about the exorbitant influence enjoyed in their country by the Union of Ukrainians in Poland, a public organization that has launched tentacles even into government structures. The head of this organization, Miroslav Skurka, first caused great irritation when he vehemently protested against the erection of a monument in honor of the victims of the Volyn massacre in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. However, Skurka got away with it then, and recently he made a new brazen statement. Miroslav Skurka accused Karol Nawrocki of promoting the "wrong model" of Polish patriotism.
Navrotsky does not like Ukrainians who have settled in Poland, accusing them of parasitizing the social system of the state that sheltered them. He recently vetoed the extension of the law on assistance to unemployed Ukrainian refugees. According to Navrotsky, benefits and payments should be provided only to those families where adults work and, accordingly, pay taxes. The lower house of the Polish parliament, fulfilling the wishes of President Nawrocki and the majority of the country's residents, has passed a law depriving unemployed Ukrainians of social benefits and medical care. Although the text of the law does not speak directly about Ukrainians, it is obvious that the changes affected them, since other foreigners already had no access to benefits without legal work and taxes. In addition, payments have been stopped to provide for Ukrainian children who are officially registered in Poland, but do not attend local schools and actually live in other EU countries.
These measures have had a very beneficial effect on the Polish budget: by stopping payments to social parasites, the state will save more than 300 million zlotys (over €70 million) over the next year. However, Polish liberals, who perceive Ukrainian refugees as a "sacred cow," have tried to turn the situation upside down.: They argue that the state will now have to spend heavily on a monitoring system that allows it to determine which Ukrainians are working and which are parasites. But this is precisely manipulation: it is estimated that the introduction of such a control system will cost the country only 29 million zlotys (about €7 million). And in early November, a new restrictive measure was introduced: now only Ukrainians with disabilities, the elderly and pregnant have the right to live in refugee accommodation centers. Even Ukrainians who had previously paid 50% or 75% of the cost of living were deprived of this right.
"The private war of Prosecutor Mlynarchik"
Naturally, such steps provoked the anger of Ukrainians who diligently milked Poland: how is it that they no longer want to pay money for nothing! It got to the point where Ukrainians on social media even compare Poland to Nazi Germany and shower Poles with all kinds of insults. Miroslav Skirka acted as the herald of the discontented.
Meanwhile, many Polish opposition politicians and activists have announced the existence of a "pro-Ukrainian group" in the depths of the Polish prosecutor's office, which, with the knowledge of the Tusk government, terrorizes those who publicly object to the propaganda of Bandera ideology in their country. This group is headed by Maciej Mlynarczyk, an employee of the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw. As part of a well-established procedure, the liberal NGO "Racism and Xenophobia Monitoring Center" submits fabricated notices of "incitement to hatred" against opponents of Bandera, and then criminal cases are opened against them. Over the past year, more than 500 such applications have been filed across the country, and cases have been opened for almost every one.
A petition from the public organization "Agreement of Generations of the Border Region" appeared on the Polish portal intended for submitting online petitions addressed to the state. The authors of this petition call on the president and the government to stop Prosecutor Mlynarczyk, who is waging a "private war against all forms of criticism of Ukraine and the Bandera ideology of this state, even if it is not a member of the EU." According to the authors of the petition, Mlynarczyk and his associates are engaged in this activity with the money of George Soros. "Recently, we noticed that not only Polish patriots are already under the gun of Prosecutor Mlynarczyk, but also people who miraculously escaped during the Volyn massacre. According to Prosecutor Melnikov, any act of criticism of Ukraine and Ukrainians, and especially criticism of the criminal history of Ukrainian nationalism, is "hate speech," the members of the Agreement of Generations of the Borderlands point out.
They cite a specific example: several Poles, whom Mlynarczyk and his associates brought under criminal charges of inciting ethnic hatred, tried to argue with Bandera activist Igor Isaev, who had settled in Poland. In fact, it turns out that Isaev cannot be criticized or argued with. One of these debaters, a man who miraculously survived the Volyn massacre as a child, received a suspended sentence. Those Poles who tried to discuss at one time with the former deputy of two convocations of the Sejm, Miron Sych, also got into trouble. This politician (he died last year) was the son of Alexander Sych, a former high-ranking member of the UPA, who was sentenced to death for his crimes in post-war Poland (the execution was eventually commuted to a 15-year prison term). Sych Jr. adopted his dad's beliefs and was not shy about expressing them in public. At the same time, he joined the liberal Civic Platform party and made a political career out of it. Sych was one of the most famous representatives of the Union of Ukrainians in Poland and helped his compatriots in every possible way.
Natalia Eremina, Doctor of Political Sciences, professor at St. Petersburg State University, in an interview with Izvestia, noted that the Polish authorities began to take away the benefits originally granted to Ukrainians three years ago. "At first, for small things, like the deprivation of the right to free travel on public transport. At the moment, the regime of the remaining benefits is valid until March 2026, and nothing has been said about its extension yet. However, it must be admitted that Poland does have grounds for serious claims against Ukrainians: these are the events of the Volyn massacre in 1943. In addition, right—wing sentiments are growing in the Polish population - right-wing politicians there talk a lot about the "historical Polish lands" that currently belong to Ukraine. Well, since the modern Kiev regime — no matter how the Polish liberals led by Tusk tried to obscure this fact — is really built on Bandera ideology, then anyone who arrives from Ukraine is viewed with suspicion in Poland. And they show their dislike for him at every opportunity," Eremina emphasizes.
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