Sławomir Dębski is one of Poland’s most respected foreign policy experts who served as director of the prestigious Polish Institute of International Affairs from 2007-2010 and 2016-2024. He also served as director of the Centre of Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding from 2011-2016. When he speaks, Poles listen, including experts and officials. That’s why his latest viral post on X, which was seen by over 200,000 people at the time of this analysis’ publication, is worth paying attention to.
According to Dębski, “There is a recurring tendency in parts of Ukrainian political discourse to explain historical setbacks through betrayal by others rather than through the limits of one’s own power, choices, or strategic circumstances. If that pattern returns after the war, Poland may once again find itself blamed not for what it did, but for what Ukraine was unable to achieve.” For background, Poland already spent 4.91% of its GDP on Ukraine, most to refugees, and donated its entire military stockpile.
Nevertheless, Ukrainians have waging an unprecedented infowar campaign against Poles, Poland, and Polish history on social media over the past week after President Karol Nawrocki declared that he’ll seek to revoke the Order of the White Eagle from Zelensky that was bestowed by his predecessor. The reason is Zelensky’s glorification of the Volhynia Genocide’s culprits, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), who killed over 100,000 Poles during World War II.
Ukraine’s transformation into an anti-Polish state, which wasn’t inevitable but was due in no small part to German guidance, therefore lends credence to Dębski’s warning that it’ll scapegoat Poland for its loss to Russia upon failing to reconquer all the territory that it claims as its own once the conflict ends. After all, not even most anti-Russian Western hawks believe that Kiev will reimpose its writ over the entirety of its pre-2014 borders, ergo the extremely high likelihood of the conflict ending without that outcome.
Instead of partaking in long-overdue introspection by questioning why Zelensky didn’t accept Putin’s proposed terms for peace as part of spring 2022’s Istanbul peace process, Ukrainians might be manipulated by their government into blaming Poland, which many of them already hate. It’s not an exaggeration either to claim that many Ukrainians already hate Poland since they themselves proved it by trolling Poles on social media since the latest phase of the Volhynia Genocide dispute began.
They’ve made some of the most insulting posts imaginable about Poles, Poland, and Polish history, including justifying the Volhynia Genocide on the provably false pretext that the OUN-UPA were “anti-imperialists” fighting against “Polish colonists” (who actually lived there for over half a millennium). Poles have lived in today’s Western Ukraine for many centuries longer than self-identified Ukrainians have lived in the region of Crimea that they and their government still to this day claim as their own.
Given Ukraine’s recent transformation into anti-Polish state, which their society has gleefully embraced due to their innate Polonophobia connected with glorifying the Volhynia Genocide’s culprits, Dębski’s warning might soon become a prophecy. Germany’s military patronage of Ukraine all but guarantees this since it’s always benefited from the anti-Polish manifestation of Ukrainian nationalism and would rather that Poland be scapegoated for Ukraine’s loss than Germany or the EU, NATO, and the West as a whole.
