Poland once threw its doors open to millions of Ukrainian refugees, but mood shifted

Warsaw: In the early months of 2022, as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, millions of Ukrainians — mostly women and children — fled to Poland, where they were met with an extraordinary outpouring of sympathy. Ukrainian flags appeared in windows. Polish volunteers rushed to the border with food, diapers, SIM cards. Some opened their homes to complete strangers.

In the face of calamity, Poland became not just a logistical lifeline for Ukraine, but a paragon of human solidarity.

Three years later, Poland remains one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies — a hub for Western arms deliveries and a vocal defender of Kyiv’s interests. But at home, the tone toward Ukrainians has shifted.

Nearly a million Ukrainian refugees remain in Poland, with roughly 2 million Ukrainian citizens overall in the nation of 38 million people. Many of them arrived before the war as economic migrants.

As Poland heads into a presidential election on May 18, with a second round expected June 1, the growing fatigue with helping Ukrainians has become so noticeable that some of the candidates have judged that they can win more votes by vowing less help for Ukrainians.

“The mood of Polish society has changed towards Ukrainian war refugees,” said Piotr Dlugosz, a professor of sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow who has carried out research on the views toward Ukrainians across central Europe.

He cited a survey by the Public Opinion Research Centre in Warsaw that showed support for helping Ukrainians falling from 94% at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 to 57% in December 2024.

“Many other studies confirm the change in mood,” he said. “At the same time, it should be remembered that helping refugees after the outbreak of the war was a natural moral reflex, that one should help a neighbour in need. All the more so because Poles remember the crimes committed by Russians against Poles during and after two world wars.”

Among those to transform the shift in mood into campaign politics is conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki, a historian and head of the Institute of National Remembrance who is the Law and Justice party’s chosen candidate and one of the frontrunners. Law and Justice, still in government in 2022, led the humanitarian response to the crisis along with President Andrzej Duda, a conservative backed by the party who travelled to Kyiv during the war.

As Nawrocki seeks to succeed Duda, he is showing ambivalence toward Ukrainians, stressing the need to defend Polish interests above all else. Duda and Law and Justice have long admired Donald Trump, and Nawrocki — who was welcomed at the White House by Trump on May 1 — has at times used language that echoes the American president’s.