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Writer's pictureMichael Julien

How Poland, Long Leery of Foreigners, Opened Up to Ukrainians – The New York Times – 22.02.23

The country, once one of the world’s most ethnically and culturally homogeneous, has accommodated far more refugees from neighboring Ukraine than any other nation says Andrew Higgins the bureau chief for East and Central Europe based in Warsaw.


A year ago, Russia’s military onslaught on Ukraine sent millions of refugees fleeing west, often to countries wary of taking in foreigners, raising fears of a repeat of the political convulsions set off by a migration crisis in 2015 that involved far fewer people.


But the paradox of foreigner-leery governments taking in huge numbers of Ukrainians has been especially stark in Poland, long one of the world’s most ethnically homogeneous countries with a deep-seated mistrust of outsiders and a tangled, often painful history with Ukraine.


Since Feb. 24 last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Poland has recorded nearly 10 million crossings across its frontier with Ukraine into Polish territory. President Biden, on a visit to Poland on Tuesday, paid tribute to its open-armed response in a speech in Warsaw. “God bless you,” he said.


To understand this approach in a country that just before the war started was beating back asylum seekers trying to sneak in from neighboring Belarus, consider the change of heart Ryszard Marcinkowski, 74, a retired Polish railway worker, experienced.


He grew up with horror stories about the brutality of Ukrainian nationalists told by his parents and aunt, all refugees from formerly Polish lands in what, since World War II, has been western Ukraine.


Yet when millions of Ukrainians started arriving in Poland last February, Mr. Marcinkowski drove to the border to deliver food and other supplies.


“I had a very bad image of Ukrainians from my family but realized that I had to help them,” Mr. Marcinkowski said. “For Poland,” he added, “Russia has always been the bigger evil.”


Since the war began, the Polish authorities have recorded 9.8 million crossings into Poland from Ukraine. That includes multiple crossings back and forth by some people and others who left quickly for other countries. But Poland, according to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, is now sheltering around two million Ukrainians, down from more than five million last year but still more than the population of Warsaw, the Polish capital.


Some far-right politicians, Mr. Morawiecki said in an interview on Tuesday, “are trying to create noise and animosity between Poles and Ukrainians” but “they failed.” Instead of being a burden or a threat, he said, the influx “will strengthen Poland demographically” and “enrich our culture.”


The State of the War

  • Biden’s Kyiv Visit: President Biden traveled covertly to the besieged Ukrainian capital, hoping to demonstrate American resolve and boost shellshocked Ukrainians. But the trip was also the first of several direct challenges to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

  • Contrasting Narratives: In sharply opposed speeches, Mr. Biden said Mr. Putin bore sole responsibility for the war, while Mr. Putin said Russia had invaded in self-defense. But they agreed the war would not end soon.

  • Nuclear Treaty: Mr. Putin announced that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty — the last major such agreement remaining with the United States.

  • In the North: A different sort of war game is playing out in northern Ukraine, where Russian shelling is tying up thousands of Ukrainian troops that might otherwise defend against attacks farther south.

“I wish Ukraine well, but if people who came here would like to stay, they will after some time have permanent documents and will be able to stay and will make us stronger from many different angles,” the prime minister said.


Rebuilt from ruins after 1945 amid seething hostility to Germans, Russians and Ukrainians, Poland has accommodated far more refugees from neighboring Ukraine than any other country. Germany is next with about a million.


Poland’s response to the refugee situation in Ukraine has won plaudits from the European Union and has given its right-wing government more clout, offsetting its previous reputation as a troublemaker because of what the bloc’s executive arm in Brussels views as moves to undermine the independence of the Polish judiciary and discriminate against L.G.B.T. people. But long-running disputes with Brussels still rumble on.


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Andrew Higgins is the bureau chief for East and Central Europe based in Warsaw. Previously a correspondent and bureau chief in Moscow for The Times, he was on the team awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting, and led a team that won the same prize in 1999 while he was Moscow bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.


A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 23, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Insular Poland Opens to Wave Of Newcomers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Around 250,000 Ukrainians live in Wroclaw, a city that before the war had a population of around 640,000, officials say. Credit...Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times




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