Julia Puzyrevska is the founder of We Support Ukraine Together, a charity in Lodz, Poland, where she feels increasingly uncomfortable speaking Ukrainian in public as a national election approaches on Oct. 15.Anna Liminowicz/The Globe and Mail
Julia Puzyrevska came to Poland from eastern Ukraine a decade ago, and she’d never felt uneasy about speaking Ukrainian in public – until now.
Ms. Puzyrevska, 34, runs a local business, and last year she started a charity in Lodz called We Support Ukraine Together shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion. At first, people from across the city came with donations and opened their homes to Ukrainians fleeing the war. But in the last few months, that support has waned – and now there’s open hostility toward Ukrainians in some quarters of the population.
“I’ve never had trouble before but now I feel uncomfortable if I speak Ukrainian on the street,” she said, sitting the charity’s small office in a corner of the downtown YMCA. Last year, she was invited to take part in the city’s official Poland Independence Day celebrations, but she doesn’t plan to participate this year, fearing the reception from the crowd. “I am afraid because the mood in changing.”
Spectators in Warsaw wear Polish and Ukrainian flags as they watch an address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on his country's independence day.JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Poland has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers since the invasion, and the country still hosts nearly one million Ukrainian refugees. But public attitudes have changed sharply, and as Poland heads toward an election on Oct. 15, anti-Ukrainian sentiment is running high.
A survey of Poles by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that support for taking in Ukrainian refugees has dropped to 52 per cent this year from 80 per cent in 2022. That shift in opinion has played out in the bruising election campaign, where Poland’s deteriorating relationship with Ukraine has become a central issue.
The far-right Confederation party has campaigned on a pledge to cut all financial benefits to Ukrainian refugees and scale back Poland’s military and humanitarian assistance to its neighbour.
“We need to start worrying about our country and not Ukraine,” said Karol Kowalski, a 33-year old IT consultant in Warsaw who is voting for Confederation. “We give them too much.”
Confederation supporters hold up a candidate's campaign poster in Katowice.Czarek Sokolowski/The Associated Press
Elzbieta Dylan, a 33-year-old mother of two, is fed up with Ukrainians receiving social benefits such as the state pension, which refugees qualify for immediately while Poles have to work several years before being eligible. “We are proud that we can help them,” said Ms. Dylan who is also voting for Confederation. “But we think that our government did a big mistake.”
Confederation is only polling at around 10 per cent, but if the outcome of the election is as close as many expect, the party could emerge as a kingmaker for a governing coalition.
The ruling Law and Justice Party, or PiS, which had been among the most vocal backers of Ukraine in the European Union and NATO, has toned down its support and promised to end social benefits for refugees in March. “Let us remember that the regulations are temporary and expire at the beginning of next year,” said Piotr Muller, a party spokesman.
PiS has built much of its campaign around stability and national security, including defending the country from Russian aggression beyond Ukraine.
The party’s fortunes took a blow on Tuesday when a pair of senior army officers, including the head of operational command, resigned along with 10 other officers. No reason were given for the departures, but Polish media have reported that there had been tension within the upper brass about operational decisions and the politicization of the military by PiS.
A dispute between Poland and Ukraine over grain shipments has also soured relations between the countries.
Polish farmers have been furious about vast shipments of Ukrainian grain streaming into the country on trains and trucks as Kyiv seeks alternative routes for its agricultural exports because of Russian shelling of its Black Sea ports. The grain was supposed to move on to countries in Africa and the Middle East, but bottlenecks meant that much of it piled up in silos in Poland, pushing down local prices.
The PiS government responded by banning imports of Ukrainian grain and food products unless the shipments were transiting through the country non-stop. Kyiv responded by launching a lawsuit at the World Trade Organization.
Mr. Zelensky shakes hands with Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki this past April.Michal Dyjuk/The Associated Press
The tension escalated last month when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the United Nations General Assembly that it was “alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theatre – making a thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”
His comments caused a fury in Poland. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki admonished Mr. Zelensky for insulting Poles and hinted that Poland would stop sending arms to Ukraine. Polish President Andrzej Duda, who is backed by PiS, went further and said, “Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to everything he can. A drowning person is extremely dangerous; he can pull you down to the depths.”
Daniel Szeligowski, a senior research fellow on Ukraine at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, played down the campaign rhetoric and said relations between the two countries remain strong. The campaign bluster “doesn’t change the fact that there is the solid foundation between between between Poland and Ukraine,” he said. “The only change could be that Poland would no longer support Ukraine so proactively.”