'Go back to Ukraine': War refugees complain of abuse in Poland
'Go back to Ukraine': War refugees complain of abuse in Poland
Research suggests that Poland's public opinion of Ukrainians is indeed worsening. According to a March 2025 poll by the respected CBOS Centre, just 50% of Poles are in favour of accepting Ukrainian refugees, a fall of seven percentage points in four months. Two years ago, the figure was 81%.
Ukraine has become a hot-button political issue in Poland's crucial presidential election campaign.
Far-right populist Slawomir Mentzen, currently polling third, is virulently anti-Ukrainian and supports an "agreement" with Russia's Vladimir Putin ...
Michal Marek, who runs an NGO that monitors disinformation and propaganda in Poland, offers some examples of the anti-Ukraine material being circulated on social media. "The main narratives are that Ukrainians are stealing money from the Polish budget, that Ukrainians do not respect us, that they want to rob and kill us and are responsible for the war," he says.
"This information starts in Russian-speaking Telegram channels, and, after that, we see the same photos and the same text just translated by Google Translate. And they are pushing [the material] into the Polish infosphere."
Mr Marek links such disinformation directly with the increase in anti-Ukraine sentiment in Poland, and says an increasing number of Poles are becoming influenced by propaganda.
"But we will only see the effect after the election - what percentage of Poles want to vote for openly pro-Russian candidates."
Seems to be the same Russian disinformation campaign that we see elsewhere (and we have been observing since Feb 2022). Unfortunately, there is an audience and 'spreaders', also here on Lemmy.
As an addition:
Poland finds what it says may be foreign-funded election interference
Poland said on Wednesday it had uncovered what could be an attempt to interfere in its presidential election campaign [Poles vote in election first round on May 18] using advertisements on Facebook that may have been financed from abroad, an assertion the social media platform disputed.
European governments have been on high alert for signs of electoral interference since Romania cancelled an ongoing presidential election in December due to allegations of Russian interference ...
Far-right populist Slawomir Mentzen, currently polling third, is virulently anti-Ukrainian and supports an "agreement" with Russia's Vladimir Putin ...
The Polish state should really be doing its utmost worst if a Russia sympathiser can poll third. Have they forgotten how many Poles died at the hands of the Soviets?
As always, it is a bit more complicated.
backstory - we talk about 3 political parties here: pis, mid-right extremist, ruled 2015-2023 + prez 2015-2025 (hope so); PO, renamed to KO recently and others, ruled ~2009?-2014 and trying 2023-now, but prez can and do block their works a lot; and konfa, under many names, includes mentioned slawomir meme-tzen, never rules, never proved they are the bads.
Both mid-right extremists (pis) and far-right extremist (konf) build their voters on fact that Poland is a bit poor. While actual centre party (ko) had their rules thru few hard world-wide economic crisis, making lives a bit harder, then they also failed to correctly announce their victories, so noone noticed these.
If "economist failures" were bad, let's turn someone else - left extremists who talk lgbt only (that is secondary to economy or whole non important factor)? or right extremists who promises moneys? Yeah, promises. Very same awesome moneys as whole world sees effects of usa and tariffs right now.
The hate to [redacted] rus? who cares! we hate germs (as Germany) even more, and their european union that takes our independence away, hurr durr! (/s). Right politics mesmerized society to think they are working for sake of independent, solo, and strong Poland, totally not for sake of [redacted] putin.
Even then there are not going to be less regugees if russia takes territory. Best way to get the ukrainian people home is to get russia back behind its own borders.
Hey Poland, how about you be anti-Russian instead?
You know, the country that killed over 6 million of your citizens during the last world war after they annexed your country…
Russian influence.
Prez elections very soon, pro-moscow [redacted[ activist and spies doing their job, for both social opinion and very probably survey too. And I mean all [redacted] moscow [redacted] - these sitting in moscow, are all active across internet spreading misinformation and are paid there as rus employees; and these that sits in polish gov for years and are paid as rus employees.
Aside to them, it is various of how society sees migrants, little for good little for bad. It is true that it may be harder to buy something at grocery store from ukrainian employee that often lack language details, then also true many made good friends thru migrant neighbours next home or work spots. Some bad and some good happens, then I believe overall most society do accept newcomers.
imHo the change (both survey and social irl) is based on [redacted] influence from outside.
What do you think about cutting off Russia from the Internet? Pros and cons?
pros= no more russian brigading, trolling and disinformation and misinformation via thier poitical influencers(people like TIM, shapiro,ruben, MTG, tucker,,,etc., and MSMs. cons= none, russians dont contribute that much outside thier own country.