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Lublin and Kostrogaj, Poland
CNN
—
A few days ago, eastern Poland was basking in unseasonably warm
weather. But the winters here are long and harsh, and they can
arrive with little warning.

It’s Friday night in Lublin, and the weather has changed. The city’s
youth are out, en masse, huddled in jackets and beanies that had
hibernated in wardrobes for months. They’re cold, but they’re amped
up, tapping their feet in impatience. And they’re angry.

Plenty of topics draw the ire of Poland’s resurgent far right. “I’m
here because I’m anti-LGBT, I’m anti-European Union, I’m anti- abortion,” a 15-year-old boy who helped organize tonight’s event in Lublin’s central square tells CNN.


“Some Ukrainians here feel too much like they’re at home,” says Przemysław Chinek, 28, who has brought his wife and two daughters –
aged five and three months – to a rally for Confederation, a far-
right party that has surged in support before Poland’s election on
Sunday.

“They threaten Poles,” he adds. “Culturally, these are similar
countries. But the morality is different.”

Confederation rails against state spending, lambasting the funds
Poland – Ukraine’s nearest and most important European ally – has provided its neighbor since Russia invaded.

“President Zelensky is a puppet!” yells the opening speaker at the
rally, riling up a swelling crowd. “I’m very tolerant. But remember
you are not a guest, you are a visitor,” Mateusz Rybaczek, a 31-
year-old content creator in the crowd, says of the vast population
of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. “You must give me respect. It’s my country.”


But Ukraine, the enemy of Poland’s enemy, has not always been its
friend. Historical trauma and neighborly competition, postponed last
February, are returning, and Confederation has given voice to Poles
who look at the country’s 1.4 million resettled Ukrainian refugees
with suspicion.

The party is not a major player in Polish politics, but it has
exerted growing influence in recent weeks. And its role could swell
this weekend; opinion polls suggest Sunday’s parliamentary elections
could result in a hung parliament, offering Confederation a path to
power if they strike a deal with Law and Justice, the populist
ruling party known by its Polish acronym, PiS.

Confederation has said its not interested in doing any deals, but
they have some ideological crossover with PiS, and Polish media has
speculated their support could be required to prop up a weakened PiS government.

Such an outcome is a worst-case scenario in Kyiv and the West. There
is sentiment everywhere at this rally – just over a hundred miles
from Ukraine – that will delight a Kremlin desperate to force cracks
in Western solidarity.

“We drove girls from Ukraine from the border to Warsaw,” says Tomasz
Piotr, 33, recounting his efforts in the early days of the invasion.
He and his wife, Katarzyna, say they donated groceries to a refugee
hub too, eager to help after seeing brutal scenes from Ukraine.

But like many of his peers at the rally, he says Ukrainians have not
shown “gratitude” for their efforts. “They want more than they
should have,” he says. “We must know when to say stop… the Pole
comes first, and we have to remember it.”

‘Everybody is tired’
Like millions of Ukrainians, Anna Martynenko remembers with fondness
the help she received as her country plunged into conflict. “Polish
people gave us food. There were places where we could stay, where it
was warmer,” she says in Warsaw, where she now lives with her two
sons. “They asked how I feel – they were so friendly.”

Poland’s support has been essential to Ukraine’s war effort; since
February 2022, several million displaced people have hurried out of
Ukraine and into Poland, while several billions’ worth of NATO
military equipment has been rushed in through Polish territory.

That support is now eroding on two fronts. While hostility fills
some public squares and airwaves through an election campaign, even
among those more sympathetic, fatigue is creeping in.

“Intellectually, Ukrainians still have my support,” says Gianmarco Ercolani, who hosted a refugee in his flat in Lodz last year. “But I
feel like I’ve done a lot already,” he says. “Now that there is not
this urgency, it makes you shift your mentality… you just get used
to it.”

Last year, a Pew Research Center survey found 80% of Poles supported
their country taking in refugees fleeing war. When Pew asked the
same question last month, support had dropped to 52%.

Martynenko speaks highly of her host country; she recalls one
incident, on the subway, when a Pole told her to “go back to
Ukraine,” but it’s nothing she isn’t used to. “People can be rude anywhere,” she says.

But the conflict has been long, and urgency has drifted. “Everybody
is tired,” she notes. “This war could come to Poland… (but) not
everybody understands this.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/europe/poland-ukraine-tensions- election-cmd-intl/index.html

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