Dozens say they have been abused in public, bullied in schools and seen increasing xenophobic material online.

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%.

  • randomnameEnglish
    38·
    8 hours ago

    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 …

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
      7·
      5 hours ago

      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.

    • atro_city@fedia.io
      11·
      7 hours ago

      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?

      • yoriaiko@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        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.

        • atro_city@fedia.io
          1·
          1 hour ago

          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.

          Yep, left parties really do fail at putting the wealth disparity left, right, and center. They get distracted with whatever or issue exists that would be great to be tackled, but not first :/

      • einkorn@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        4 hours ago

        Rookies! Our (Germany) bootlickers poll second or first, depending on which surveyor you ask.

        • Melchior@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          This is for a presidential election with a two round system. So he basically has no chance winning it. However his party is at 17% in polling for the Sejm.