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Warsaw failed to anticipate that refugees would build new lives and Kyiv would demand an equal place at the European table
One of the unintended consequences of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine was that it gave Poland a rare slice of geopolitical stardom. When Russian tanks started their ultimately unsuccessful cavalcade towards the Ukrainian capital, ordinary Poles rushed to help millions of people fleeing the looming conflict. As Polish people opened their doors to civilians running from Russian bombs, even the then ruling populist Law and Justice party had to follow suit.
It seemed that Poland and Ukraine were bound for an iron-clad alliance, unprecedented in their shared history. Poland advocated for the Ukrainian cause in the west, with some success. Ukrainian leaders, in turn, praised Poles for their generosity and the government in Warsaw for contributing weapons and money to the war effort. Given that recent history between the two countries had been marked by accusations of second world war-era genocide, border shifts and postwar displacements of millions of people, it was a remarkable change.
Mateusz Mazzini is a Warsaw-based journalist writing on global affairs for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka
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