Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in an interview that Russia is plotting to drive a wedge between Poland and Ukraine to get the upper hand in the war.
This comes against the backdrop of a diplomatic feud between Poland and Ukraine that broke out in May when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named an army unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist group responsible for killing up to 100,000 Poles during World War II on the territory which is now western Ukraine.
Zelenskiy’s decision triggered all-round criticism from Polish authorities and prompted conservative President Karol Nawrocki to strip Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, which Zelenskiy mailed back to Poland.
Anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland is on the rise, with Polish police having received 180 reports of suspected hate crimes against Ukrainians in the first half of 2026, which marks an over-30% increase year-on-year, Polish news outlet Rzeczpospolita reported earlier in July.
Poland, which has been Ukraine’s unstinting ally since the outbreak of the Russian invasion, was home to nearly 1.7 million Ukrainians in 2025, according to July data by the Polish Statistics Office.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in February that nearly one million refugees from the war in Ukraine live in Poland.
