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%.
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 …
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.
Hey Poland, how about you be anti-Russian instead?
You know, the country that killed over 6 million of your citizens during the last world war after they annexed your country…
It’s the 4th generation memory wipe effect. Once the current grandparents have no direct experience of the thing, forget about the thing.
That would be true for Nazi Germany invading Poland, but Poland was a Soviet puppet until 1989, so well within current memory.
Good point.
Russian influence.
Prez elections very soon, pro-moscow [redacted[ activist and spies doing their job, for both social opinion and very probably survey too. And I mean all [redacted] moscow [redacted] - these sitting in moscow, are all active across internet spreading misinformation and are paid there as rus employees; and these that sits in polish gov for years and are paid as rus employees.
Aside to them, it is various of how society sees migrants, little for good little for bad. It is true that it may be harder to buy something at grocery store from ukrainian employee that often lack language details, then also true many made good friends thru migrant neighbours next home or work spots. Some bad and some good happens, then I believe overall most society do accept newcomers.
imHo the change (both survey and social irl) is based on [redacted] influence from outside.
What do you think about cutting off Russia from the Internet? Pros and cons?
pros= no more russian brigading, trolling and disinformation and misinformation via thier poitical influencers(people like TIM, shapiro,ruben, MTG, tucker,etc., and MSMs. cons= none, russians dont contribute that much outside thier own country.
