Ukraine and Poland forge ‘special relationship’ as war brings neighbours closer

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Journalist Anna Budyńska was among the grassroots army of Polish volunteers who rushed to help Ukrainian refugees as they began crossing the border in February to escape Russia’s invasion of their country.

At first, she and her partner donated money and collected food and blankets for refugees arriving in Warsaw. But she wanted to do more to understand those whom she was helping and decided to learn Ukrainian.

“I suddenly realised that I had always loved to travel to western Europe, India or Mexico, but I had never visited Ukraine, knew nothing about Ukrainian culture and only a little bit about its history that was taught at school,” she said.

Polish historian Maciej Franz said 2022 would be remembered as “a special year of integration” between “two nations that were isolated from each other by politics half a century ago, and even earlier by hatred and hostility, which was the result of the nationalism that raged between the mid-19th and 20th centuries”.

He said his country was helping Ukraine “because we know what it’s like to be under [Russian] occupation and how terrible it can be”.

About 1.3mn Ukrainians lived in Poland before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, and the number has more than doubled since then.

Their presence has given Poles a new sense of kinship with and respect for their neighbours. Arguments over dark chapters in their history — notably the 1940s massacres of Poles by Ukrainians in Volhynia and other Nazi-occupied regions — have been replaced in Warsaw by public tributes to Ukrainians for fighting Russia.

“We share a distinct fatalism and the same history of Russian imperialism, so many Polish people feel that the same kind of Russian aggression could once more await us,” said sociologist Karolina Wigura.

Poland’s focus has also started to shift away from the practicalities of housing Ukrainian refugees towards longer-term cultural integration. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw now hosts the Sunflower solidarity centre, which organises workshops, cooking classes and weekly lectures on the theme of “decolonising” from Russia. Most of the speakers are Ukrainians and some are recent refugees.

Curator Natalia Sielewicz said the solidarity initiative had moved on from initially acting as a “pit stop” for displaced Ukrainian artists. “It’s recently been much more about learning about Ukrainian culture and unlearning Russian imperialism,” she said.

In Warsaw many billboards now target Ukrainians and are written in their language © Maciek Jazwiecki/FT

While many Ukrainian refugees were given access to free Polish language classes, their own language is now widely featured on billboards and used on Polish TV, where retailers such as Lidl air Christmas ads with Ukrainian subtitles. Warsaw cinemas run films with Ukrainian subtitles, while Polish companies have designed Ukrainian-language versions of their apps.

This cultural embrace has come almost as a shock to some Poles who once looked down on Ukrainians, particularly after Poland leapt ahead of its neighbour economically after joining the EU in 2004.

Football fan and journalist Joanna Rokicka said she remembered being disappointed when Poland and Ukraine co-hosted the 2012 European football championship, believing Poland should have hosted the tournament alone.

“For many of us, the Ukrainians were then just our house cleaners and basic workers, just as Poles have been for the English and others,” she said. “But we’ve now seen their bravery and how they’re fighting for us against Russia.” 

Since February, Poland’s military and political support has been unwavering, even after Poland and Nato attributed an accidental missile strike that killed two Polish farm workers last month to the Ukrainian army. In the aftermath, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that “it is in our best interest to help Ukraine”. A week later, he made another visit to Kyiv.

But the financing of this support has dwindled, with ordinary Poles now struggling with 25-year-high inflation that has reduced their donations and increased refugee fatigue. The Polish authorities recently removed many subsidies given to Ukrainians.

As the war drags on, more Ukrainians and their businesses are embedding themselves into their host country.

Oleksandra Pysankina left Kyiv in February and continues to work for Vivid, a Ukrainian digital advertising agency, from Warsaw.

Pysankina said that in its early days in Poland, the agency was proud to promote its struggles as a Ukrainian company trying to survive. “But we have now changed the narrative because I think people in Poland were also getting a bit tired of hearing this and we now want to show ourselves as a normal market player that is paying taxes in Poland.” Vivid registered its subsidiary in Poland in July.

Despite the goodwill between Warsaw and Kyiv, it is not clear whether Poland will spearhead Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction.

Some Polish executives draw a distinction between strongly supporting Ukraine’s war and wanting to do business again quickly in a country where they struggled despite initial optimism after Ukraine’s 2004 Orange revolution, when protests forced the repeat of a rigged election.

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Polish private equity firm Abris Capital Partners opened an office in Kyiv in 2006, the same year as its Warsaw launch. It invested in Ukrainian retail and financial services but eventually withdrew to focus instead on Romania.

“After the Orange revolution, many companies rushed into Ukraine hoping it would become the next Poland, but huge inflation, devaluation, the lack of strong institutions and corruption forced many of us to back off,” Abris partner Monika Nachyla said. “I’m sure there will be some willing to take an aggressive investment approach [after the war] but that probably won’t be our path.”

Postwar Ukraine and Poland will in any case need to consolidate the newfound solidarity forged by Russia’s invasion.

“There’s no such thing as a solid and forever good relationship between nations,” said Wigura, the Polish sociologist who lives in Berlin and highlighted the recent souring of relations between Poland and Germany, including over a Polish demand for €1.3tn in reparations for wartime losses inflicted by the Nazis.

“But at least we can say that in terms of a grassroots reconciliation between the people of Poland and Ukraine, we’re now in a very good place.”