Poland and Ukraine: Looking Forward

Photo by MART PRODUCTION

By Mieczysław P. Boduszyński and Agnieszka Lazorczyk

President Joe Biden’s visit to eastern Poland last month included an emotional encounter with a handful of the more than 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees that have found shelter in the country over the past two months.

In addition to taking in the largest number of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, Poland and Poles have been among the strongest advocates of punitive measures designed to punish President Vladimir Putin for his aggression. Poland, in fact, was the first state to encourage and recognize Ukraine’s independence in 1991 (at a time when Washington was still urging Ukraine to remain in the Soviet Union) and since then has been its most consistent and vocal champion.

From today’s vantage point, it might be tempting to assume that positive Polish-Ukrainian relations were a given after the fall of the Berlin War in 1989 and the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. But neighboring peoples tend to have complicated histories. Relations between Poles and Ukrainians are no exception.

AN HISTORIC VIEW OF THE Relations between POLAND and UkrainE

Poland and Ukraine are inextricably linked. Many Poles have family roots in what is today western Ukraine. Their ancestors’ graves are there, and they grew up hearing stories of the beauty of Lviv and the bountiful agricultural land that surrounds it. In various forms, Poland ruled over large parts of what is today Ukraine from the 14th to the 18th centuries and, in a more limited form, between 1918 and 1939. Those Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarussian and other territories are known to Poles, somewhat romantically, as the Kresy (borderlands). These lands were host to a very diverse population, and relations among various groups were not always peaceful. In 1918, Poles and Ukrainians fought over control of Lviv, which became part of interwar Poland. And at times, Poland and Russia even cooperated at Ukraine’s expense.

During World War II, what is today Ukraine and was then Nazi-occupied eastern Poland, was the site of horrific atrocities. Nazi Germany rounded up and slaughtered the region’s large Jewish population. In 1943-1944, in the region of Volhynia (Wołyń in Polish) and Eastern Galicia, an ultranationalist militia known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), massacred up to 100,000 Polish civilians as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, widely recognized by Polish and many Western historians as genocide. Ethnic Polish militias later retaliated, killing as many as 10,000 Ukrainians, while after the war Polish communist authorities forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of ethnic Ukrainians from their ancestral lands. There was also a civil war between ethnic Poles and Ukrainians in cities such as Przemyśl, which lies within the borders of present-day Poland.

This bloody history did not bode well for Polish-Ukrainian relations after communism collapsed, when Poles and Ukrainians were freed to talk openly about the past. And yet, by the time the Soviet Union crumbled, Poland had already decisively directed its gaze toward the future and the West. While European Union and NATO membership were far from a given, both former Polish communists and the newly-empowered democratic opposition began to work toward the goal of integration into Western institutions. Even as Poland studiously cultivated ties with the West, it pursued a constructive policy of engagement with the East, one that renounced any historical claims to the territories of newly-independent states such as Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The two policies were intimately linked, for Poles understood that the door to Euro-Atlantic institutions would not be held open if Poland’s eastern borders were in question. They not only created the foundation for peaceful relations, but, as Timothy Snyder argues, strengthened the fortunes of Ukrainian democrats against their hardline communist foes, who could no longer claim that Poland was a greater threat than Russia. Thus, at a time when Poland’s western border with Germany remained formally unresolved (yet another reason to ensure that eastern borders were stable), and nationalism was resurgent across the former communist world (and especially in the former Yugoslavia), Polish policy affirmed the sanctity of post-World War II borders, reassuring both its eastern neighbors—Ukraine included—and the West that any kind of revanchism was not on Warsaw’s agenda. Civil society followed suit, with activists from Solidarity opening a dialogue with the Ukrainian Rukh opposition movement.

Still, difficult memories, resentments, and mistrust remained and have been mobilized by nationalists in both countries over the past three decades. Unsurprisingly, Russian propaganda has also sought to falsely portray alleged Polish territorial ambitions in western Ukraine.

This troubled past notwithstanding, after communism Ukraine and Poland have increasingly seen each other in strategically beneficial terms. A bilateral defense relationship has developed. By the middle of the 2010s, Poland had become a leading provider of foreign military assistance to Ukraine, Polish military instructors trained Ukrainian soldiers, and in 2016, a common Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade achieved operational readiness.

Shortly after its own accession to the EU in 2004, Poland launched and prioritized a number of exchange and development programs meant to aid Ukraine in its own bid to join the EU. This in turn likely made it easier for Poles to welcome the unprecedented influx of economic migrants from Ukraine in the years that followed. Already a popular destination for seasonal and short-term workers in the agricultural sector prior to 2014, Poland now became the main destination for Ukrainian migrants from all walks of life. An increasing number of Ukrainians chose to settle in Poland permanently, and there was a sharp increase in intermarriage. Estimates from 2019 put the number of Ukrainians living and working in Poland at 1.27 million, or 3.5% of the country’s population. By early 2022, it would have been rather hard to find a single Pole who did not know, or whose family or friends did not personally know, a Ukrainian.

It is a testament to the effectiveness of Poland’s pragmatic and European-leaning diplomacy over the past three decades that Polish-Ukrainian relations have remained mostly forward-looking, and that Poland has become an inspiration—and now a place of shelter–for Ukrainians seeking a Western, democratic future. And this kind of forward-looking mindset stands not only in sharp contrast to the past-obsessed worldview of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also the populist nationalism that has gripped large parts of the European continent in recent years.
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Mieczysław P. Boduszyński is an associate professor of politics and international relations at Pomona College and a former U.S. diplomat. He is a member of the Pacific Council and a Truman National Security Fellow..  

Agnieszka Lazorczyk is program coordinator at the European Union Center of California.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.