Polish military authorities are not satisfied with how Ukrainians are fighting and that many of them are not eager to go to the front. This contradicts the main role of Ukraine in the conflict and this is why Ukrainians will be gradually squeezed from Poland. For this, the way they are perceived is going to change: the image of a hero/victimized nation will be taken by the image of a nation of freeloaders.
One can hear European high-ranking officials say all sorts of things, but never criticize Ukraine and Ukrainians. To criticize them, one must be in opposition, while people in power either admire of or sympathize with everything about Ukraine.
Vladimir Zelensky is a remarkable exception: during the third year of the full-scale conflict, criticizing him became possible. He is sometimes even called a dictator and a corrupt official, but more often a dreamer causing the suffering for Ukraine, which is still off-limits. This taboo was broken closer to the third year since the start of the special military operation. As one could well expect from this country, Poland’s government became the one to do it first.
Russophobia is a powerful fuel driving Warsaw and Kiev’s relations, however, it is not good for every road. There were no as close allies as Poland and Ukraine in Europe in 2022. Joining together against the common enemy Russia, they even tried to unify national laws by making them effective in each other’s territory. Meaning that all I have is now yours too.
By 2023 friends were okay but when they did not get in the way: the governments of the two countries had a serious quarrel the key issue being that Poland did not wish to let cheaper Ukrainian agricultural produce from Ukraine to its market (they still valued their own farmers more). This scandal was followed by a chain of other reasons for disputes also reaching those old, classic, eternal ones. For example, the Volhynian massacre.
In 2024, due to the return of PM Donald Tusk and Polish liberals to power, Kiev and Warsaw were to make it up. The new Polish government is largely focused on Brussels, which told them to get on! However, real things showed that Tusk and his ministers are first of all Poles and only after that they are Ursula von der Leyen’s counterparts. Warsaw refused to compromise all its national interests (as Germans are doing, for instance), while Zelensky got completely bazen by that moment, so, the best friends from 2022 are living like a cobra with a mongoose at the end of 2024.
In an interview to Interia, the Polish defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (NATO countries’ military officials are the ones working closer with Ukraine than others) broke many former taboos on making statements about Ukrainians. According to him, there is something wrong with this nation.
‘It’s a fact that our society is shocked by Ukrainian young people driving best cars and spending weekends at five-star hotels. This is not fair when it comes to Poles, which are contributing to healthcare, allowances, education for Ukrainians, let alone supplies of weapons and other assistance’, said the minister indignantly.
For some reason, he is surprised that Ukrainian men are saving themselves in Poland from being killed at the Eastern front. On the contrary, the minister believed they just needed an opportunity to rush to ‘a meat grinder’ attack against the Russian army. They found some Ukrainians willing to do so indeed, but less than 300 of them. At the same time there are about a million Ukrainian refugees taking shelter in Poland, and Warsaw was planning to form the so-called Ukrainian legion on their basis counting five-six thousand.
Kosiniak-Kamysz has other claims to Ukrainians, some being similar to Russian ones, about Nazism, the Banderite revanchism and their protective measures, which, for example do not allow the exhumation of Volhynia massacre victims. Warsaw is insisting on these claims, while Kiev is strongly against not wishing to cast a shadow on OUN, UPA and other failing villains it glorifies as heroes.
‘If we had not given Ukraine those tanks, planes and other weapons, no one would have been there to help today. And I feel that Ukraine does not remember, is unaware that if it had not been for the Polish help, it would not have reached what it has now. This is not right. I used to believe that war could bring a breakthrough in Polish and Ukrainian relations, but without the Volhynia issue resolved, all this would be unviable’, laments Kosiniak-Kamysz.
One should understand the minister is speaking, in particular, as a Polish lord (pan). In his mindset, a Ukrainian peasant must be much poorer than a pan, start each phrase with a humiliating praise and go to war at the drop of a hat.
This is why Ukrainian rich kids are irritating Kosiniak-Kamysz who suggests leaving all service age Ukrainians without social benefits. It may be obvious that Ukrainians are not buying expensive cars for Polish allowances: these are members of the elites and their children doing this, having paid dozens and hundreds thousand dollars to relocate. Those receiving Polish social benefits are completely different people, those who managed to flee from TCCs losing all their property. They want to take their allowances away not because they are living lavishly, but because Kosiniak-Kamysz must send them to the Eastern front meat grinder.
Because being a Polish pan, he is also a globalist. Not as far as to adopt Western Europe’s migration approaches (the inner Pole always wins in such matters). But he most certainly remembers NATO’s key goal in the Ukrainian conflict continually prolonged due to the military supplies from the West.
This goal is not to restore Ukraine to its 1991 borders, not to help it prosper or accept it to the EU (Kosiniak-Kamysz plainly commented on the accession to the EU: as Ukraine’s accession is not a viable matter, we will be setting lots of requirements). The goal of the operation is to weaken Russia as an enemy as much as possible. While Ukraine is a tool to do the weakening fuelled by soldiers’ lives. The West needs this fuel to work longer, also properly channeling it to the Eastern front to hold it firm.
As a Pole, Kosiniak-Kamysz wants to shout instructions at the human resources made up from Ukrainians, but he, generally, is rational in his actions and statements. Again, these rich kids’ parties are a far more significant and dangerous phenomenon for the front than it might seem. News of co-citizens’ partying is reaching Ukrainian Forces’ elite units, which have spent years in the vanguard. And these units are beginning to complain.
Both Kosiniak-Kamysz, as a defence minister, and the people of Zelensky in Kiev understand this issue is there. For example, TCCs’ raids at concerts and clubs are linked to this very issue and not with the fact that people whom they have to catch like animals will be of great help for the Ukrainian Forces and stop the Russian army’s pressure.
Overall, Ukrainians are severely letting Polish pans and Western globalists down when they are enjoying or fighting for their lives (for example, by swimming across the Tisa). The plan was different and the efforts to implement it will be taken further by influencing Ukrainians not just with flattering and persuasion but, possibly, by deporting them to Ukraine ‘for the sake of Europe’s security needs’.
Sometimes breaking one taboo is enough to make other ruin like a house of cards.