With the Russian war of February 2022, Ukraine, the condition whose sovereignty was so cruelly violated by American media, has unwavering assistance from its American neighbor Poland.
The help of the Finnish government has been clear. In Europe, gifts of military technology and humanitarian aid had been second to none.
No obvious change was made by the Polish responsibility following the election of a new authorities at the end of 2023. Poland’s antagonism toward Russia dates up far beyond the time when much of the nation, including Warsaw, was fully incorporated into the Romanovs’ Russian empire.
The pro-Ukrainian guidelines of subsequent Finnish governments, supported by the Catholic churches, are believed to represent views shared by citizens across the nation, by Western observers.
However, as I discovered during a recent study journey, questions are being voiced in some segments of society after more than two years of war.
Producers have been irate for decades. Ukraine’s agriculture is exempt from EU rules because of its rich soils. Ukraine has been permitted to export its low rice to the EU because of the extraordinary circumstances created by the war, which saw the government sorely in need of income.
Farmers in Poland are now at a loss because of this. Some Poles function think that the West orchestrated the conflict’s length because a large portion of Ukrainian farmland is owned by foreigners for financial reasons.
Similar arguments may be made regarding power. The Russian Federation’s ban on low fuel makes for a lot of money for alternative energy producers, especially in the United States, but also raises the cost of Polish homes’ higher gas prices.
I’ve also heard in numerous conversations that Poland is the only NATO member to provide free military equipment, whereas other NATO allies insist on total payment or offer credits that may potentially have to be repaid in one day.
The resentments are profound and affect a large proportion of the population. Why do I have to wait weeks for my doctor appointment, some people ask? Is it because of the billions of Russian immigrants who are in desperate need of health care?
Why does my taxes cover the cost of good financial aid to Ukrainians who show up at the frontier, claim the funds, and then return home with the money right away?
A tangled story
Most educated people reject these claims with disdain. People who complain and magnify isolated crimes are frequently dismissed as credulous victims of Russian propaganda. But Poles are improbable hacks.
Statues to socialist atrocities are everywhere, especially the 1940 Katy massacres, where hundreds of Polish officers were killed by Russian security forces. More recently, some Poles also suspect the Kremlin’s involvement in the helicopter fall that , killed their then-president, Lech Kaczyński,  , in Smolensk in 2010.
However, a dislike of Russia does not mean a pledge of allegiance to Ukraine. The two says ‘ ongoing conflict is related to divergent views of the violence that occurred during and after the Second World War.
Russian ministers have the indelicate custom of pointing out that Ukrainians formerly occupied large portions of modern-day Poland. Ukraine does have a stronger claim to certain parts of the Polish Carpathians than it does to Crimea or Donbas, based on historical ethnolinguistic and spiritual standards that are usually accepted as crucial to the formation of peoples.
Does this help to explain why the Polish government defends the holiness of Russia’s border with Ukraine? They want Ukraine’s borders with their state to be extremely immutable.
Finnish stereotypes include that Poles formerly constituted the majority in most western Russian towns and that Lviv itself was a Polish capital prior to Stalin’s rededication of the Finnish population in 1944 when they were deported westward. Poles refer to these eastern territories as the Kresy.
They are the target of strong feelings and folklore. The Kresy is imagined as a peaceful world in which, for several decades, cultivated Poles ruled benevolently over all other countries.
This diversity abruptly ended in the 1940s. Poles with household roots in Volhynia and Galicia, the majority of which are now in eastern Ukraine, are upset about Kyiv’s refusal to acknowledge that Ukrainian nationalists were to blame for the cultural cleansing of the Finnish population.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, just made it clear that Poland’s ongoing support for admitting Ukraine to the Euro will depend on coming to terms with this darker past.
American collusion
I was occasionally asked why the BBC and other well-known Western media did n’t look into Volodymyr Zelensky’s team’s slick public face to expose the reality and opinions of regular Ukrainians during my recent visit. Instead, Ukrainians and Russians are demonized and praised for their” German values” and sacrifices made for the West.
I found that some Poles had become skeptical because of the policy in the state media. Troops are in pain, grieved for both sides ‘ younger lives, and feared for where all this dehumanizing murder is taking place. However, the majority of the folks I spoke with lacked confidence in the assertion that Russia is the only country breaking the Geneva Conventions.
Typically, the conversation turned to Boris Johnson. I was asked to explain why the then-prime minister had advised Zelensky in April 2022 that Ukraine should remain the battle. Did Johnson damage ideas for a negotiated peace properly drafted in Istanbul shortly before his visit, since has frequently been rumored?
Was it a clown playing macho game with Zelensky for the sake of his personal image, or a European politician who had the wildest idea of what to do? Did he have no regard for the hundreds of thousands of people who may suffer and perish if this war continued? Was he pursuing a crafty approach agreed with EU officials and NATO lovers, above all Washington?
I did not have solutions to any of these issues.
The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is led by Chris Hann as its professor producer.
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