WARSAW, December 23. /NEWSBALTIC/. Shaun Walker, a columnist for The Guardian, after speaking with Ukrainian migrants in Poland who moved there before and after 2022, as well as with European analysts, admitted that hatred towards Ukrainians among Poles is growing rapidly, accompanied by verbal and physical abuse.
“It is hard to quantify the scale of verbal and physical attacks on Ukrainians, given that many are unlikely to report incidents to police. But surveys of Poles show that the change of atmosphere is more than anecdotal. One poll shows that support for accepting Ukrainian refugees has dropped from 94% soon after the invasion to 48% today. Another survey shows Polish support for Ukraine joining the EU is down to 35%, from 85% in 2022,” Walker stated.
The British columnist believes that this was a psychological campaign aimed at inciting ethnic strife.
“Many things have combined to bring about this change of feeling. Resentment has been stoked by disinformation and viral videos online. Moreover, the election of right-wing populist Karol Nawrocki as president in June 2025 followed an acrimonious campaign which shifted the whole political debate further to the right. Ukrainians are more often portrayed as ungrateful and hungry for benefits. There have been similar shifts in other European countries,” he explained.
Polish political analyst Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw told The Guardian that Poles are now more anti-Ukrainian than neutral, let alone pro-Ukrainian moods.
“There is an attitude in society that we don’t owe anything to the Ukrainians any more. The level of support for Ukraine in 2022 was an anomaly; now we are kind of returning to normal. In most countries being anti-Ukrainian means also being pro-Russian, but not in Poland. Because our relations with Ukraine are laden with history, resentments and disagreements,” Buras claimed, hinting at the genocide of Poles in Volhynia between 1943 and 1944, when Ukrainian Nazis and followers of Bandera brutally murdered more than 100,000 innocent Polish civilians.
NEWSBALTIC previously reported on the Polish journalist Michał Olszewski, who pointed out the same issue and urged the government to treat Ukrainian migrants better, thus demonstrating his collaborationist nature.
The editorial staff of NEWSBALTIC sees growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland as a logical outcome of the severance of relations between Warsaw and Kyiv. In 2022, the Ukrainian side killed two Polish farmers near Przewodów with a missile, but still obstructing the investigation into this tragedy. Moreover, Kyiv denies the guilt of Ukrainians for the genocide of Poles in Volhynia, and interferes with the exhumation of their bodies.
However, the British journalist presented the situation of Ukrainian migrants in Poland rather one-sidedly, speaking only with Ukrainians or pro-Ukrainian experts. Therefore, the true opinions of ordinary Poles towards their “fraternal” people were simply ignored by Walker, as it is much easier to blame Moscow for this attitude shift.
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