As the West has coalesced to support Ukraine and resist Russia’s invasion, Poland has become the effort’s logistical hub.
In recent years, Poland had been seen as something of a problem child in NATO and the EU under the leadership of the Law and Justice party, labeled as “populist and illiberal” at home and abroad. But now, thanks to its position on Ukraine’s western border, Poland has been lauded for rising to the occasion, relaying massive amounts of military and humanitarian aid, welcoming millions of refugees and hosting a steady stream of world leaders.
However, Poland’s own crisis of democracy is far from resolved, and the inflows of refugees combined with the economic strains of the war and two years of pandemic only threaten to make it worse. Nowhere in Poland are these strains more obvious than in the capital, Warsaw, whose mayor narrowly lost the last presidential election as candidate of the liberal opposition to the current president.
That mayor is Rafał Trzaskowski, who has served as the leader of Poland’s capital since 2018, when he swept into office in a rare landslide victory for the Polish liberals that have been in opposition since 2015. Although he lost the presidential election to the incumbent, Andrzej Duda, he has been credited with rallying the Polish opposition and became one of its most recognizable and popular faces.
Trzaskowski recently visited the United States to discuss the war effort and Poland’s key role in it. When I sat down with him in the Henry R. Luce Hall at Yale University, he drew attention to the unprecedented scale of the refugee inflow into Poland and cautioned the West not to ascribe all the initial success that Poland has had in this crisis to the central government. Much of the burden is being shouldered by local governments like his who are improvising their way through the challenges. “Remember,” he told me, “populists rarely run cities.”
The truth, Trzaskowski said, is that the West’s anti-Russian efforts rest on a Polish foundation that could crack under the strain.
“In times of crisis, Poland needs to be the strongest democracy in Europe,” he said. “We will face enormous challenges in the future, especially as the initial eruption of popular solidarity and goodwill wanes.”
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
How has the war in Ukraine impacted Warsaw?
We have accepted 300,000 refugees in Warsaw alone. The population of my city went up more than 15 percent in just one month. To give you a sense of the magnitude — at the peak of the Mediterranean migration crisis in 2015 we had 200,000 people coming every month to the whole of Europe, as opposed to just one city.
We have granted the Ukrainians a quasi-citizen status, which gives them access to free education, health care and social security. Most of them live with family, friends, or even complete strangers who have opened their homes. As a result, there are no big reception centers or people forced to sleep in tents in public spaces. We have been sending transports of food and medical supplies to Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv, Lviv and, at the beginning of the war, to Kharkiv. Indeed, the first transport of food that arrived in Kyiv came from Warsaw.
We are doing everything we can to help Ukraine. The problem is that most of those efforts are the work of civil society, nongovernmental organizations, volunteers, charities and, of course, local administrations. It is based largely on improvisation. We need a comprehensive strategy on a national and European level.
How would you assess cooperation between your local administration and the central government in managing the refugee crisis? Most large and medium cities in Poland are run by parties opposed to the current government. What kinds of difficulties has that tension created?
The central government did its bit on the border by allowing Ukrainian refugees to cross into Poland without documents and formalities, but it was late in reacting to the crisis in the cities. However, I’m going to refrain from criticizing the government and try to emphasize how we are working together to focus our efforts on combating the current crisis. That cooperation, when it takes place below the political radar, works out rather well.
The problem with the central government is that they are trying to push a lot of responsibility on our shoulders. For example, when they needed to allocate Polish social security numbers to Ukrainians, they asked us to do it. The same goes for distributing financial aid to the families taking care of the refugees, even though they provide the money. For now, we are trying to collaborate as best we can, but our concern is that there is no comprehensive, long-term strategy. I suspect that the central government has not asked European or international institutions to implement an overall strategy because they want to claim most of the credit for the Polish response to the crisis. I’m afraid that it is going to be a repeat of the Covid crisis when, during the first wave we focused on cooperation, but as the pandemic evolved and the government suffered from a lack of comprehensive strategy, they tried to shift all the blame on to us, the local governments.
What are the long-term challenges that your city will face with accommodating the refugees?
Again, we need a comprehensive strategy and what you now see in Poland is mostly based on improvisation. The long-term challenges relate to education, health care and social security, along with everything that accompanies integrating refugees into our society. At the beginning of the crisis, I told our government that they needed to have a strategy on education. I already have 280,000 local kids in my schools and now an additional 120,000 Ukrainian children in need of education. I cannot accept all of them into my schools overnight — we have already enrolled over 20,000 new students. I told the government that most of those 120,000 in my city should simply continue online learning with their Ukrainian schools, and this is exactly what the Ukrainian education ministry wants. The government said yes, but they have not taken any steps in that direction.
We will face enormous challenges in the future, especially as the initial eruption of popular solidarity and goodwill wanes, which is only natural, and the attention of the European Union and the wider world turns somewhere else. Now is the window of opportunity to ask for help. Now is the chance to set up a European relocation strategy. Now is the time to ask for additional financial help from the European Union, which should also directly go to refugees, NGOs and local governments.
Poland took on the burden and risk of becoming a strategic hub of Western aid to Ukraine, despite its vulnerable position bordering a Russian missile base in Kaliningrad to the north and Russian-allied Belarus to the east. What do you think are the chances that Russia will deliberately or accidentally target Polish territory? What do you think Poland should do in that situation?
It would be difficult for Russia to do that accidentally, because there are Patriot missile systems all along our border. The Americans are there, and their presence is felt on the ground. If the Russians attack any member of NATO, then the alliance will respond in force. This is why President Biden’s words about defending every inch of NATO territory were so important to deter villains and bullies. Putin only understands the language of strength.
So far, the Polish people have rallied to support Ukrainians who have suffered as a result of the war. But the influx of refugees and massive amounts of aid being provided to Ukraine, coupled with high inflation that predates the war, are going to strain the Polish economy sooner or later. Is there a danger that the economic hardship could erode social support for the anti-Russian effort? Could it increase support for isolationist and xenophobic far-right elements within the ruling coalition — and outside of it — that have so far remained marginalized?
That is why we need to share this responsibility and that is precisely why we need a voluntary European relocation program, because we cannot shoulder this entire burden ourselves. If the quality of the city services — for which I am held responsible as the mayor — goes down as a result of this burden, then the solidarity shown by our people will wane. This is why we need to share this burden internationally, because that way we stand a chance of sustaining this solidarity for longer. We might experience some backlash, but at the end of the day the support of the Polish society for the Ukrainian cause is so strong, that I do not think we will see this spiral into a prevailing anti-European sentiment. This is because we in Poland really do understand that the Ukrainians are now fighting for our freedom as well.
The spike in support that the government enjoyed at the outbreak of war has now largely subsided, but most Poles, including half of opposition voters, approve of the government’s response and the politician that got the most praise for his wartime performance is the incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, with Donald Tusk, the leader of your party, lagging far behind. Has the war given a boost to the ruling Law and Justice coalition that will be hard for your party to overcome?
You forgot about some local leaders [laughter].
That’s true, you are indeed ranked third after the president and the prime minister.
Going back to your question, I think people were expecting a much bigger effect of rallying around the flag. Of course, those politicians who were directly involved in the crisis, the president, the prime minister, but also the mayors including myself, got a boost in ratings. This is only natural — we were on the front lines, whereas most other opposition leaders had no obvious, active role to play.
We need to show, however, that the opposition and the civil society also had and keeps having a role in this effort. After all, what happened in Poland was thanks not only to government action but primarily due to civic mobilization, nongovernmental organizations and local administrations. These are the very same forces that this government was abusing for the past several years, trying to suppress them and starve them of resources. We need to make sure people understand that this amazing outpouring of support was not the doing of the government, but of the Polish civic society.
Over the past two months the Polish government experienced an incredible reversal of its public image and international position. From an alliance outlier marred by rule of law issues, infringements on women and gay rights, attempts at challenging property rights of foreign investors and a damaging reaction to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, it has become a strategic partner of Washington and Brussels celebrated for a principled and generous response to the war in Ukraine. As one of the leaders of the Polish opposition, do you feel that the government is being given a pass by the West?
My job is to make sure that they don’t get a pass, because now in times of crisis Poland needs to be the strongest democracy in Europe. We cannot afford to be a weak link on the eastern flank of the alliance. At the same time that we give due credit to those who organized the response to the crisis, we cannot forget that this government for years undermined democracy in Poland. We are explaining this to everyone. From my own experience, I can tell that most American and European politicians understand that.
What should Poland’s allies do to support Polish democracy while still maintaining a strong position against Russia’s aggression on Ukraine?
Keep the pressure up on the Polish central government, so that it backs away from some of the measures that were undermining our democracy and give help directly to the NGOs and the local governments which are on the front line of the current crisis. Remember, populists rarely run cities. Help us out. This is the most effective way to help Ukrainians and the people most directly active in their support.
