Warsaw, Poland – What began as a routine late-night shift for Marharyta Nauman, a 49-year-old Ukrainian taxi driver in the western Polish town of Leszno, devolved into a harrowing ordeal that has become a stark symbol of escalating tensions between Polish society and the millions of Ukrainian refugees who sought solace in the country following Russia’s full-scale invasion. The brutal assault, perpetrated by a 16-year-old Polish youth, is not an isolated incident but rather a symptom of a deeper societal shift, where initial solidarity is increasingly overshadowed by exhaustion, economic anxieties, and a resurgence of nationalist rhetoric.
The incident, which occurred in the early hours of August 26, 2026, paints a grim picture of the challenges faced by Ukrainian refugees and the complex socio-political landscape in Poland. While official statements and diplomatic exchanges often focus on high-level relations – such as the recent diplomatic spat between Polish President Karol Nawrocki and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the revocation of the Order of the White Eagle – the lived experiences of individuals like Nauman reveal a more unsettling reality on the ground.
The Night of Terror: A Chronology of Violence
The fateful night began like any other for Nauman. As Poland prepared to celebrate its National Independence Day, a local club in Leszno was buzzing with activity, drawing a larger-than-usual crowd of young people. Nauman, accustomed to the rhythm of her nightly work, received a fare request from near the club. Upon arriving, she encountered a chaotic scene: a fight was in progress, with two young men being restrained. The taxi was ordered by a relative of one of the involved youths, who paid for the ride and instructed Nauman to take the boy home.
"I had to weave through the crowds of young people, moving very slowly," Nauman recounted to BIRN (Balkan Insight) in a subsequent interview. "I was afraid he would jump out of the car."
After navigating a roundabout, the teenager, later identified as a 16-year-old legally protected from identification, began to panic. Realizing he wasn’t being taken back to the club, he demanded to be driven to a gas station on the other side of town. Nauman, however, proceeded to the pre-booked address. As she slowed down to make a turn, the youth violently grabbed the steering wheel, nearly causing a head-on collision with an oncoming vehicle.
Upon reaching the destination, the teenager refused to exit the vehicle. Nauman, concerned for her safety and the vehicle, contacted her employer and left the phone on speaker. The ensuing moments were captured by the recording, revealing the chilling escalation of the assault. The boy moved to the driver’s seat, yelling, "If you don’t take me, Ukrainian whore, I’ll drive the car myself!"
Nauman attempted to shut off the engine and retrieve the keys. It was then that the physical attack began. The 156-centimeter, 55-kilogram Nauman was brought to the ground with a blow to the knee. The assailant continued to kick her while she was down, even filming the assault at one point. She managed to crawl to her apartment door, ringing the bell. The attacker pursued her, striking her with his knee and slamming her against the door, forcing it open. Nauman fell inside, at the feet of a man who turned out to be the boy’s father.
The blows to her chest were so severe that she was initially unable to speak. When she regained her breath, her cries were met by the boy’s mother, who pulled him away and told him to stop. "I crawled on my hands and feet. She closed the door behind me," Nauman recalled.
The entire ordeal, from picking up the youth outside the club to the final moments of the assault, lasted approximately an hour. Fortunately, Nauman’s employer, accompanied by an off-duty police officer who was a passenger in his car, arrived on the scene. The officer provided immediate first aid and called an ambulance.
The Scars of Aggression: Medical Evidence and Lingering Trauma
Medical records obtained by BIRN documented significant injuries to Nauman’s chest and lower legs, including extensive bruising and a suspected fractured rib. A CT scan performed the following day revealed "multiple organ trauma."
"I am almost 50 years old. I have never insulted or attacked anyone. No one had ever beaten me in my life," Nauman stated, nine months after the attack. "But it turns out you can do nothing wrong and still face this kind of aggression. Where does this come from?"
The psychological toll has been immense. For months following the assault, Nauman was largely confined to her apartment, experiencing severe anxiety and fear. Familiar places became sources of distress, and she found herself feeling unsafe in crowded areas or around groups of young people. The lingering trauma is a constant reminder of the vulnerability she experienced.
A Shifting Societal Landscape: Data on Hate Crimes and Public Opinion
Nauman’s experience is not an isolated incident, but rather a reflection of a growing trend of hostility towards Ukrainian refugees in Poland. While initial solidarity following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 was overwhelming, with nearly every Pole surveyed supporting the reception of refugees, public sentiment has gradually eroded. By December 2025, the country was nearly evenly divided: 48% remained supportive, while 46% opposed.
Data from the Polish National Police, shared with BIRN, reveals a concerning increase in hate crimes targeting Ukrainian citizens. In 2024, police registered 267 Ukrainian nationals as victims of hate crime proceedings, rising to 275 in 2025. While overall hate crimes increased by approximately one-third during this period, the reporting methodology shifted in 2026, making direct comparisons difficult. However, the new system revealed a stark reality: by August 26, 2026, police had already recorded 356 hate-related offenses against Ukrainians. A significant portion of these – nine out of ten – fell under categories already tracked by the previous year’s system, including 204 cases of public insult or physical integrity violations motivated by prejudice, and 71 cases involving illegal violence or threats.
Dr. Lukasz Adamski, Director of the Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue in Warsaw and an expert on Polish-Ukrainian relations, cautions against viewing this trend as a simple societal backlash. He suggests a more nuanced and potentially dangerous dynamic at play. "I am more inclined to think that people who were already xenophobic or dissatisfied are becoming more radicalized, fueled by resentment over Ukraine’s memory politics, war fatigue, and daily tensions with Ukrainians," he told BIRN.
Recent CBOS (Public Opinion Research Center) polls corroborate this distinction. While acceptance remains high in everyday interactions – 83% of Poles would accept a Ukrainian as a colleague, 82% as a neighbor, and 75% as a doctor – these figures represent a decline in every measured type of relationship since 2023.
For Nauman’s 25-year-old daughter, Elvira, this shift is palpable in daily encounters. "Even ordinary situations feel different now. You bump into someone in a shop, apologize, and suddenly face this hostility," she said. "People react even to the slightest trace of a Ukrainian accent. We now try not to speak Ukrainian on the street, but three years ago, it wasn’t like this."
Dr. Oleksandra Iwaniuk, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw and founder of the literary club "Po Sasiedzku" (Next Door), which uses literature to foster dialogue, echoes this sentiment. While she rarely speaks Ukrainian in public, an incident in July 2025 saw her verbally attacked on a tram for speaking her native tongue. A man in military-style clothing shouted, calling them "Russian whores." No one else in the tram intervened. When she posted about the incident online, hundreds of people responded with similar experiences: "Me too." "It felt like a moment when something that had happened in silence suddenly became visible," she noted.
While Iwaniuk reported her assault and received empathetic support from the police, she believes many incidents go unreported, especially as xenophobia becomes a part of the political discourse. In August 2026, the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party proposed the deportation of Ukrainian men aged 25-60 who are unemployed in Poland, including those working illegally, should the party return to power. This proposal, coupled with the creation of special deportation centers, further fuels fear among refugees.
"With deportation now part of the political debate, people might be even more afraid to report attacks," Iwaniuk stated. "If someone beats you and then threatens to tell the police that you were the aggressor and could be deported, that might be enough to silence you."
Official Responses and Diplomatic Maneuvers
The public outcry following Elvira Nauman’s viral Facebook post about her mother’s assault spurred a more robust official response. Police reviewed CCTV footage and took a detailed statement from Marharyta Nauman. The Mayor of Leszno contacted the family. The teenage assailant was placed under probation supervision, and in November 2025, juvenile court proceedings were initiated against him in Leszno. Court documents indicate the case involves causing bodily harm, an offense linked to Nauman’s nationality, and threats of murder. His first hearing is scheduled for September 15, 2026.
Privately, approximately 50 unknown individuals reached out to Elvira, some even asking for the attacker’s address to "deal with him." However, Marharyta Nauman adamantly rejected such calls for vigilantism, stating, "He didn’t kill me, so why should you kill him? What’s the point?"
Amidst the messages of support, a disturbing six-second video surfaced showing a pig’s head on a doorstep with a knife nearby, accompanied by the message, "Every Ukrainian pig must be deported from the country by any means necessary." Subsequently, someone vandalized the entrance door of the Nauman family’s apartment building, shouting insults at Ukrainians. The family was forced to relocate.
The broader diplomatic landscape has been fraught with tension. In June 2026, relations between Poland and Ukraine reached a nadir when President Nawrocki revoked President Zelensky’s highest state honor, the Order of the White Eagle, a move Zelensky subsequently returned. While this incident grabbed international headlines, the underlying animosity had been brewing for some time.
In the previous year’s presidential race, candidates across the political spectrum reportedly leveraged the "anti-Ukrainian card," pushing the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. "The campaign was a turning point, as it was then that Ukrainians living in Poland – and, in a broader sense, Ukraine and its support – became an issue of domestic politics," explained Iwaniuk. She argued that it was easier for populists to attribute public service "shortcomings" to Ukrainian "privileges" rather than addressing systemic issues. "Populists need an enemy, and after other groups, including the LGBTQ community, it was the turn of Ukrainians – because there were enough of them to turn dissatisfaction into political capital."
Ideas once confined to the fringes of the political right began to permeate the mainstream. Upon taking office, President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the extension of benefits for Ukrainian refugees, arguing that the child benefits for 800+ families should be reserved for Ukrainians working in Poland. Revised legislation more tightly linked certain benefits to employment and school attendance. In March 2026, Poland also began phasing out significant aspects of the emergency support system established after the invasion.
Bartlomiej P., a Member of Parliament for the right-wing Confederation party, views these restrictive measures not as acts of hostility but as a correction of policies that, in his opinion, granted Ukrainians special privileges over other foreigners. "The Polish state should treat all foreigners equally, without giving special privileges," he told BIRN. P. condemns attacks on Ukrainians but rejects the notion of an unprecedented wave of hostility, arguing that crimes committed by Ukrainian citizens against Poles receive less attention and that Polish resentment over historical atrocities committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during World War II is too quickly dismissed as prejudice.
This historical animosity has become inextricably linked to the deteriorating relations. The latest escalation began in May 2026 when President Zelensky posthumously awarded a Ukrainian military unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA." While the UPA is revered by many Ukrainians for its fight for independence, its members were responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. In response, President Nawrocki revoked Zelensky’s decoration.
By July 2026, for the first time, polls indicated a majority of Poles (52%) opposed the admission of Ukrainian refugees, with only 42% supporting it. "In Poland, the sentiment was roughly this: ‘We helped a lot, we opened our homes, and in return, they honor people responsible for the genocide of Poles’," explained Dr. Adamski. "In Ukraine, it was: ‘For four and a half years, we have been fighting, we have suffered, and in doing so, we have also defended Poland from Russian aggression – and now they are trying to tell us whom we can and cannot consider national heroes’."
Russia, predictably, has sought to exploit these tensions. An analysis by the Polish Institute of International Affairs revealed a 171% increase in Polish-language social media posts containing extreme anti-Ukrainian hate speech between May 26 and July 13, 2026, with interactions increasing by 345%. Russian networks, including VKontakte (VK) and pro-Kremlin coordinated networks like Operation Pravda, played a significant role. The Institute concluded that while Moscow did not create the crisis, it was the primary beneficiary.
Adamski argues that the deeper problem is cumulative: old prejudices combined with Russian disinformation, social media amplification, and the coarsening of political debate. Journalists and intellectuals, he suggests, have lost some of their traditional role as filters, allowing dissatisfaction to be directly channeled to voters and harvested for political gain.
The Deeper Chasm: Historical Narratives and Economic Disparities
The differing historical perspectives between Poland and Ukraine also contribute to the current friction. Raised in Kyiv, Iwaniuk notes that she learned very little about Volhynia: "Poles are immersed in history. They talk about history in magazines, on television, at the dinner table." In Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine, questioning the past was discouraged. She recalls asking her father about the UPA and Volhynia as a schoolgirl, to which he replied, "I don’t know – I think they were the ones who fought against everyone."
This gap, Iwaniuk argues, contributed to several unfortunate political missteps. For instance, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko knelt before a memorial to Polish victims of Volhynia shortly after Kyiv renamed Moscow Boulevard after UPA leader Stepan Bandera, a move that coincided with former Polish President Bronisław Komorowski’s visit to Kyiv. "President Zelensky undoubtedly knew that Poland had a different perspective on the UPA than Ukraine, but I doubt the decision to give one of the units the name ‘Heroes of the UPA’ was intended as a deliberate provocation," Adamski commented. "My impression is that no one in Kyiv fully anticipated the consequences."
An economic asymmetry also plays a role. "Poland’s post-communist transformation was successful, while Ukraine is still fighting for its survival as a state," Iwaniuk explained. "While Poles have the luxury of looking back and debating the past, for Ukrainians, the reaction is often: ‘Are you kidding? You want to talk about this now, when we don’t even know if our country will exist?’" This reality does not legitimize anti-Ukrainian violence but helps explain how a relationship built on extraordinary solidarity has become politically explosive.
This contrast is evident in another paradox Iwaniuk observes: Ukrainians are integrating more into Polish society precisely as the collective, imagined "Ukrainian" is becoming increasingly threatening in political discourse. "It’s your neighbor, the father of your child’s friend, your colleague, the woman working in the local shop, someone who owns a business down the street," she said. "Yet, the abstract Ukrainian is increasingly portrayed as a criminal, a competitor, or a security threat."
Vladimir Medvedev, a Polish citizen of Belarusian origin and founder of the "Głos Emigranta" (Emigrant’s Voice) initiative, encountered further repercussions when organizing a recent protest for migrant rights. Individuals with legal status were reportedly harassed by far-right activists, facing provocations and threats of deportation. Even his German acquaintance, married to a Pole and fluent in Polish, was told to "go to hell in Ukraine" after someone detected his accent.
Both governments now appear to recognize the danger. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has publicly called on Warsaw and Kyiv to de-escalate tensions, and recent bilateral talks have emphasized the importance of "responsible communication" and a balanced tone in public debate. On August 24, 2026, Warsaw hosted an event commemorating the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence, with blue and yellow flags flying alongside Polish red and white banners.
However, political tensions do not dissipate on command. On August 14, a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl and her 12-year-old brother were allegedly insulted and physically assaulted near the railway station in Bydgoszcz after speaking Ukrainian. A woman was later charged with insulting them and violating their physical integrity due to their nationality. She has denied the charges.
The Lingering Impact: Personal Loss and a Fragile Future
For the Nauman family, the damage is deeply personal. Initially, they tried to conceal the news of the assault from Marharyta’s father in Ukraine. However, when the case made national headlines, they felt compelled to tell him. That night, he suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma. He died six days after his daughter was attacked, unable to bid her farewell. This was a devastating blow, as her husband had died in 2022, just months after joining the Ukrainian army.
Adding to her distress, Nauman’s employer stopped responding to her calls, and her salary ceased. She discovered that her social security contributions had not been paid to the state. The assault was never registered as a work accident. Fortunately, local social security office employees showed understanding and assisted her with the necessary procedures. She has also been offered free psychological and psychiatric assistance.
Marharyta Nauman arrived in Leszno almost by chance. She came to Poland to work in 2020, and the agency she registered with assigned her to Leszno. Over time, she grew to love the town and claims she wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But now, she moves with caution. "For months after the attack, I barely left my apartment," she told BIRN. Medication has helped, and familiar places – the veterinarian’s office, the social security office, places where she knows people – are easier to navigate. Crowded shops and unfamiliar streets remain daunting. "When I see a group of young people," she confessed, "I don’t feel safe."
Her daughter, Elvira, believes the response from people in Leszno offered a glimmer of hope that things could improve. Yet, often, when she closes her eyes, she still sees her mother on the ground at 3 AM, being kicked by a 16-year-old while she cries out. The incident, and the broader societal shifts it represents, have left an indelible mark, casting a shadow over the future for many Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
