{"id":1418723,"date":"2026-07-17T13:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/crimes-against-ukrainians-have-increased-sharply-in-poland-what-is-behind-this-trend\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T13:00:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:00:40","slug":"crimes-against-ukrainians-have-increased-sharply-in-poland-what-is-behind-this-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/crimes-against-ukrainians-have-increased-sharply-in-poland-what-is-behind-this-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"Crimes against Ukrainians have increased sharply in Poland: what is behind this trend?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poland has seen a significant increase in reports of hate crimes against Ukrainian citizens since the beginning of the year. In the first six months of 2026, Ukrainians contacted the police 180 times, which is more than a third more than in the same periods of previous years. If this trend continues, the number of complaints could reach a record high by the end of the year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was reported by<\/a> the Polish edition of Rzeczpospolita, citing data from the Main Directorate of the Polish Police. Law enforcement agencies emphasize that these are registered statements, not confirmed facts of crimes.<\/p>\n

According to police data, 267 such reports were registered in 2024, and 275 in 2025. However, in the first six months of 2026 alone, there were already 180, indicating a noticeable increase in the number of reports.<\/p>\n

One of the most high-profile cases recently was an incident in the city of Bielsko-Biala. There, a bus driver, who was also a police officer, publicly insulted Ukrainians because of their origin. After the incident became public, the man was arrested, pleaded guilty, and lost his job.<\/p>\n

Jacek Kucharczyk, President of the Institute of Public Affairs, believes that official statistics do not reflect the real scale of the problem.<\/p>\n

“It is generally believed that not everyone reports hate crimes. Some victims are simply afraid to contact the police,” he noted.<\/p>\n

According to the sociologist, the increase in aggression is related to the general atmosphere in society, political rhetoric, and the activities of Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n

“There is no need to be ashamed anymore, and some even consider attacks on Ukrainians a source of pride. We should not forget that the accumulated anger is also amplified by Russian trolls,” said Kukharchyk.<\/p>\n

The Union of Ukrainians in Poland also links the increase in anti-Ukrainian sentiment to the presidential election campaign and Russian information operations. According to the organizations “Demagogue” and the Institute for Media Monitoring, just a few months before the elections, about 94 thousand anti-Ukrainian publications were recorded in the Polish segment of the Internet, which received a total of over 32 million views.<\/p>\n

At the same time, criminologist Brunon Gaulist notes that public sentiment is influenced not only by the statements of politicians, but also by high-profile crimes involving individual citizens of Ukraine, which form a negative attitude towards the entire Ukrainian community.<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , X<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poland has seen a significant increase in reports of hate crimes against Ukrainian citizens since the beginning of the year. In the first six months of 2026, Ukrainians contacted the police 180 times, which is more than a third more than in the same periods of previous years. If this trend continues, the number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1417417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76870,76871,76872,76878,76885],"class_list":["post-1418723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-society","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1417417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}