Over 106,000 Ukrainians have left Poland amid growing anti-Ukrainian sentiments, — Media

The number of Ukrainians living in Poland with temporary protection status has decreased by more than 106,500 people since spring.

This is evidenced by government statistics published on September 8.

In April 2026, approximately 974,500 people were registered under the immigration status Poland offered to Ukrainian refugees. By early September, that number had fallen to 868,000 — roughly an 11% drop.

Polish media have suggested that growing hostility toward refugees is driving their outflow from the country. While some people are indeed emigrating, Ukrainians in Poland say that a significant part of the decline is linked not to street conflicts but to bureaucratic obstacles.

Bohdan Kontsur, a migration expert with the “Ukrainian House” organization in Warsaw, told Radio Liberty that legislative changes in March required Ukrainian refugees to explicitly inform border officers of their intention to obtain temporary protection in Poland.

However, he said, many people “only find out about this when they go to the [immigration] office and are told that their entry into Poland was registered as a tourist visit.”

Kontsur notes that many Ukrainians he has assisted reported that they were not asked any questions at the border and saw no information about the new rule at crossing points.

Ukrainians entering Poland as tourists cannot apply for temporary protection status.

Demonstrators holding posters with the inscriptions “No social benefits for Ukrainians,” “Ukrainian youth to the front!” and “We remember Volhynia” (referring to the Volhynia tragedy during World War II). Warsaw, December 19, 2025

Anna Sobieska-Tekień, spokesperson for the Polish Border Guard, confirmed this legal detail to Radio Liberty.

“A Ukrainian citizen who intends to enter Poland to obtain temporary protection must explicitly declare this intention to the Border Guard officer during the border check,” she wrote in an email.

“This is important because, in the absence of such a declaration, entry may be registered under the general rules applicable to visa-free travel,” the spokesperson added.

People leaving Ukraine at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian-Polish border, Medyka, February 26, 2022

In early September, additional legislative changes took effect, resulting in a significant number of Ukrainians being removed from the register of people with temporary protection due to the documents they used to enter Poland.

During the first wave of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, many received temporary protection without a valid foreign passport, using other documents such as an internal passport or ID card to prove their identity. In the case of children, birth certificates could be used, and some refugees were registered solely on the basis of a statement of identity.

Under the law that came into force this year, Ukrainians who were granted temporary protection without presenting a valid travel document were required to confirm their identity with such a document by August 31.

Those who did not do so lost the right to legal residence associated with temporary protection status as of September 1.

Kontsur says this affected tens of thousands of Ukrainians. The rules were later changed to give those affected a six-month period to “regularize their situation,” he added.

Polish border authorities stated that Ukrainians who lost temporary protection in September “may regain this right after legally re-entering Poland” with a valid passport.

Event marking Ukraine’s Independence Day. Warsaw, August 24, 2026

According to surveys, Poles’ attitudes toward refugees have deteriorated significantly in recent months.

Immediately after Russia’s invasion in 2022, about 94% of Poles believed their country should accept Ukrainians fleeing the war.

By July 2026, this figure had fallen to 42%, while more than half of respondents opposed accepting Ukrainian refugees.

The rise in negative attitudes toward Ukrainians is largely linked to renewed attention to the killings of Poles during the Volhynia tragedy in the 1940s, as well as the issue of social benefits for newcomers.

A new escalation in relations between Ukraine and Poland emerged after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June renamed one of Ukraine’s military units “in honor of UPA heroes.” This drew a sharp reaction in Poland. President Karol Nawrocki stated that for a significant part of Polish society, the UPA remains an organization responsible for crimes against the Polish civilian population. In Ukraine, the UPA is seen as a force that fought for Ukraine’s independence against Stalinist and Hitlerite occupation. Only certain UPA units participated in the Volhynia massacre under German occupation, when Ukrainians killed Poles and Poles killed Ukrainians. On June 4, 2025, the Polish Sejm passed a law on the National Day of Remembrance of Poles, victims of the genocide committed by the OUN and UPA in the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic, referred to in Poland as the “eastern borderlands” in 1939–1946, citing the number of Polish victims as over 100,000. Ukrainian researchers cite a figure of 100,000 Polish victims as an estimate. They note that in published documents of contemporary Polish researchers, the figure ranges from 15,000 to 19,000 Polish victims and from 10,000 to 15,000 on the Ukrainian side. There are also documents that indicate provocations by the Soviet NKVD to incite conflict between Poles and Ukrainians in 1939–1946.

Olena Babakova, a Polish-Ukrainian researcher and co-author of the 2026 report on relations between Poles and Ukrainian migrants, says that the widely reported rise in anti-Ukrainian sentiment began ahead of the 2025 presidential elections.

She also notes that many factors are behind the decline in the number of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, including Ukrainians switching to other types of residence permits.

Babakova says that isolated cases of hostility toward Ukrainians in Poland have little impact on people’s decisions to relocate.

She told Radio Liberty that after the stress of leaving their home country and settling in another state, many Ukrainians who do not want to return to the war zone “feel that it is impossible to go through this emotional work again and move to yet another new country.”

“You work so hard to provide a home and food for your children. Maybe your children are having problems at school, but the school is still relatively good and close to your home. What has to happen for you to decide to pack your bags and just leave tomorrow?” the researcher notes.

Those leaving Poland, according to Olena Babakova, “are not the people who feel the worst.” “They are simply the people who have the most resources to carry out another such migration campaign,” she says.