Poland’s publicly financed Mieroszewski Centre just released the results of its latest survey on “Poland and Poles as seen by Ukrainians 2024”, which showed that a surprising percentage of Ukrainians have begun to sour on Poles and Poland. 16% of them claimed that their opinion about Poles worsened since 2022, though only 5% now have negative opinions about them. Even so, just 41% have positive opinions about Poles compared to 83% in 2022, with most (53%) now having neutral opinions.
Negative connotations also spontaneously come to mind among 12% of Ukrainians when they think of Poland. 15% expect that Poland will stop supporting their country’s EU integration and 9% suspect that it’ll stop supporting them against Russia. 20% of Ukrainians now believe that Poland considers part of their country as its own, which is up from 11% last year. On a related note, 34% think that it’s either true (4%) or there might be some truth (30%) to the claim that Poland plans to occupy Western Ukraine.
What’s interesting about the preceding data points is that the percentage of Ukrainians with negative opinions about Poles (5%) and to whom negative connotations spontaneously come to mind when they think of Poland (12%) is much lower than those who suspect Poland of plotting against Ukraine (34%). Moreover, only a little less than half of them (45%) think that serious disputes exist in their bilateral ties, which breaks down to 26% and 19% when it comes to the grain and Volhynia Genocide disputes.
The Mieroszewski Centre assessed that this pair of disputes is most responsible for Ukrainians no longer have an overwhelmingly positive opinion about Poles and shifting towards what they described as a more “pragmatic” one instead. About that, 70% now consider Poles to just be neighbors compared to 54% in 2022, while just 31% consider them to be allies compared to 52% in 2022. Readers should note that the authors clarified that some tallies surpass 100% due to rounding and multiple answers.
Something else to consider is that only 23% of Ukrainians think that Poland helped their country more than any other European one, which is behind the UK (34%) and Germany (29%) in spite of 46% of them considering Poland to be the neighbor with whom they’re culturally closest. Nevertheless, 49% of Ukrainians want either an alliance (27%) or confederation (22%) with Poland, while 49% just want good neighborly relations without any foreign policy consultations.
The aforesaid data suggests that even the over one-third (34%) of Ukrainians who suspect Poland of plotting against their country still want normal relations with it, as do the nearly half of them (45%) who believe that the grain and Volhynia Genocide disputes are serious issues afflicting their bilateral ties. The same holds true for those who expect that it’ll stop supporting Ukraine’s EU integration (15%) and aiding them against Russia (9%). As the survey’s authors assessed, this is indeed a “pragmatic” stance.
It can be explained by the fact that Poland is Ukraine’s gateway to the West, without which their country would be economically and militarily doomed, so it follows that they’re averse to worsening relations with Poland since the power dynamics are too lopsided for them to gain anything from doing so. There’s a lot of love lost between them over the past nearly three years since the majority no longer feel fondly about Poles and Poland, but this souring hasn’t led to radical anti-Polish sentiment, at least not yet.
This observation suggests that even those who suspect Poland of plotting against their country don’t hate it or Poles, though that could instantly change if Poland deploys peacekeepers there. For the time being, Ukrainians’ hatred is directed almost exclusively against Russians, likely due to the ongoing hostilities and associated state propaganda. Poland and Poles aren’t seen as enemies like Russia and Russians are, but they’re no longer seen as allies, just as mostly reliable neighbors with shared interests.
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Readers might be interested in comparing this survey with prior ones about Poles’ attitudes towards Ukraine and Ukrainians:
* 21 February: “A Top EU Think Tank’s Poll Proved That Polish Views Towards Ukraine Are Noticeably Shifting”
* 27 March: “What Do The Latest Surveys Say About Poles’ Attitudes Towards Ukraine & The Farmers’ Protests?”
* 8 July: “Interpreting A Top EU Think Tank’s Latest Survey On Polish Attitudes Towards Ukraine”
* 22 October: “The Latest Survey Shows That Poles Are Getting Fed Up With Ukrainian Refugees & The Proxy War”
What they’ll discover is that Poles are souring on Ukraine and Ukrainians much more than Ukrainians are souring on them and Poland.
