Valeria Kholkina was buying ice cream with her husband and four-year-old daughter when a man overheard them talking in Ukrainian. "Teach your daughter to speak Polish," the stranger said. He then physically attacked both parents.
The incident, which took place in the city of Szczecin in northwestern Poland, reflects an increasingly hostile atmosphere towards Ukrainians in that country, a dramatic reversal from the mood in 2022. Then, following a full-scale Russian invasion, hundreds of thousands of Poles expressed support and hospitality for their neighbors, volunteering at the border and offering their homes to refugees.
Now that surge of goodwill is waning as the war approaches its fourth anniversary, and surveys show an increasingly negative attitude among Ukrainians in Poland, fueled by a political debate that has shifted to the right on migration, as well as the resurgence of historical grievances.
According to UNHCR figures from September, there are about a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Kholkina is not one of them; she is among nearly half a million Ukrainians who arrived in the country before 2022 and has lived in Poland for more than a decade. “I am more Polish now than Ukrainian… but I never thought someone would lecture me on how to talk to my own family,” she said. She has suffered from panic attacks since the incident and has told her daughter never to speak Ukrainian in public.
Her experience was extreme, the attacker was eventually sentenced to 14 months in prison, and insults for speaking Ukrainian in public became widespread.
"Things seem much more tense now," said Aliona, a 39-year-old entrepreneur who lives in a small town in western Poland. "Today, when we go out, the children whisper, 'Mom, let's speak Polish now.' It wasn't like that before. No one commented on anything. Even if they heard my accent, they would just smile," she said.
It is difficult to accurately determine the extent of verbal and physical attacks on Ukrainians, given that many likely do not report incidents to the police. However, polls among Poles indicate a shift in sentiment. One survey found that support for accepting Ukrainian refugees has fallen from 94 percent immediately after the invasion to 48 percent today. Another poll found that support among Poles for Ukraine joining the EU has fallen to 35 percent, from 85 percent in 2022.
"There is a view in society that we no longer owe the Ukrainians anything," said Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw.
Several factors have come together to drive this shift in sentiment. Disinformation and viral videos on the internet have fueled resentment. In addition, the election of right-wing populist Karol Nawrocki as president in June 2025 followed a fierce campaign that shifted the entire political debate further to the right. Ukrainians are increasingly portrayed as ungrateful and greedy for social benefits, despite economic data showing that they are net contributors to the Polish economy.
Similar developments have been reported in other European countries. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about the increase in the number of young Ukrainian men traveling to Germany. "I asked the Ukrainian president to ensure that young men, especially from Ukraine, do not come to Germany in large numbers, in increasing numbers, but to serve their country," he said. His government is working on legislation that would tighten access to social benefits for Ukrainian refugees.
In Poland, in August, Nawrocki vetoed a government bill that would have extended financial support for Ukrainian refugees, instead proposing his own bill that would have made benefits conditional on employment. A compromise bill was eventually passed.
Oleksandr Pestrikov of the Ukrainian House in Warsaw said that anti-Ukrainian sentiment first appeared online in 2023, with any article about Ukraine in Polish media immediately flooded with negative comments. Some accused Russian bots of fueling prejudice online, and for a time it seemed that this hatred did not spill over into real life. That, he said, is now changing.
"Until this summer, this negativity rarely went beyond the internet; the complaints we received from Ukrainians were sporadic and similar to the situation before the war. But since the summer, we have had quite a large number of people reporting attacks to us - fortunately, mostly verbal so far," he said.
The complex history between Poland and Ukraine also plays a role, with frequent references to the massacre of more than 100.000 Poles between 1943 and 1945, committed by Ukrainian nationalists in an attempt to prevent the Volhynia region from becoming part of Poland. Ukraine has now allowed Poland to exhume the bodies of the victims, but the process is slow and the subject is emotional for many in Poland.
"The level of support for Ukraine in 2022 was an anomaly; now we are in a way returning to normal," Buras said. It is this historical context that allows a large part of Polish society to turn against Ukrainians, while still claiming to be firmly anti-Russian. "In most countries, being anti-Ukrainian also means being pro-Russian, but not in Poland. Because our relations with Ukraine are burdened by history, grievances and disagreements," he added.
The boiling point came when a video of people waving a wartime nationalist Ukrainian flag during a concert by a Belarusian rapper at a stadium in Warsaw went viral. The appearance of the red-and-black flag, which is widespread in Ukraine but considered offensive in Poland, led to clashes in the stadium and ultimately resulted in the deportation of 63 people from Poland, 57 of whom were Ukrainians. Increasingly, right-wing discourse on the alleged dangers of migration began to include Ukrainians, while in 2022 and 2023 they were mostly presented in positive contrast to non-European refugees trying to enter the country from Belarus.
In most countries, being anti-Ukrainian means being pro-Russian, but not in Poland. Because our relations with Ukraine are burdened by history, grievances, and disagreements.
Not all Ukrainians in Poland have had negative experiences. In a survey published late last year, 58 percent of Ukrainians said they expected their children to live in Poland "for many years." Discrimination is also not felt equally everywhere, especially among those living in larger cities.
Anastasia Zheleznyak, a 39-year-old child psychologist from the city of Kryvyi Rih, moved to Warsaw with her two children in the summer of 2023 after deciding that her hometown, which is regularly under Russian attack, was becoming too scary a place for children to grow up. She chose Warsaw because her cousin had already moved there.
Since then, she has learned Polish through state language courses, retrained as a masseuse and recently opened her own salon in central Warsaw. "Personally, I've only had good experiences in Poland," she said. When her children, now aged 10 and 15, started school in Warsaw, teachers and other parents, she says, did their utmost to help. "At one parent-teacher meeting, everyone asked how they could help. It almost made me cry," she said.
The only negative experience she had was on the internet. Whenever she opened Facebook or other social media, she was bombarded with negative comments about Ukrainians. "I just stopped looking," she said.
Zheleznyak says many of her Ukrainian friends have started leaving, citing a change in mood and the rising cost of living, but she now wants to build a future in Poland. "I think it would be better for my children and give them more opportunities than returning home," she concluded.
Translation: NB
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