Three years ago, Poland opened its doors to millions of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war with Russia, becoming not just a logistical hub but also a model of human solidarity and compassion. As it writes Associated PressAlthough the country currently remains one of Ukraine's most loyal allies and defender of its interests, the tone towards Ukrainians in Poland itself has changed.
Currently, there are about a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland, and the total number of Ukrainian citizens is about 2 million. Many of them arrived before the war as economic migrants. At the same time, as Piotr Długosz, a professor of sociology at the Jagiellonian University, notes, according to a survey by the Center for Public Opinion Research in Warsaw, support for helping Ukrainians has fallen from 94% at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022 to 57% in December 2024.
As the publication reminds, Poland is preparing for presidential elections on May 18, and the growing fatigue with helping Ukrainians has become so noticeable that some candidates have decided that they can get more votes by promising to help Ukrainians less.
Among the latter is Karol Nawrocki, a conservative candidate from the Law and Justice party and one of the favorites in the election. He promised that if he wins, he will introduce changes to the legislation that would give priority to Polish citizens over Ukrainians in queues for medical services or schools.
Confederation Party candidate Slawomir Mentzen even accused Ukrainians of overcrowding schools, inflated housing prices, and taking advantage of Poles' generosity.
And at a rally of far-right candidate Grzegorz Braun on April 30, his supporters tore down the Ukrainian flag from the balcony of the city hall in Biała Podlaska, which had been hanging there since February 2022 as a sign of solidarity.
At the same time, the Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, refutes the claim that Ukrainians take more than they give. According to him, about 35 people receive support without working, but what they receive is only a small part of what Ukrainians pay in taxes. He noted that about 000 enterprises run by Ukrainians are currently operating in Poland.
"Ukrainians help the Polish economy develop," — he told the Associated Press.
As Kateryna, a Ukrainian who lived in Poland for many years, says, she has seen the changes with her own eyes. So, in 2022, strangers often greeted her with sympathetic looks and the words “Glory to Ukraine.” But last fall, a man on a tram scolded her for reading a Ukrainian book. This spring, another man pushed her outside a social security office and shouted, “No one wants you here.”
"Such incidents remain rare — the coexistence of Poles and Ukrainians in friendly relations is still the norm. But she believes that such incidents were unthinkable three years ago," — writes AP.
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