Two Ukrainian children were attacked by two adults in Poland for speaking their native language, Kiev’s consulate in Gdansk has claimed.
The incident has come amid increasingly negative attitudes toward Ukrainians in Poland and a diplomatic row over Kiev’s veneration of nationalist groups implicated in the WWII-era massacres of ethnic Poles. Reports of hate crimes against Ukrainians have also risen sharply this year.
In a statement on Sunday, the Consulate General of Ukraine in Gdansk said the attack took place last week in Bydgoszcz, a city in north-central Poland.
A 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother were “subjected to aggression by adults simply because they were speaking Ukrainian to each other,” the consulate said.
The alleged attackers, a man and a woman, used obscene language and threatened the children “based on national intolerance,” according to the statement. They later allegedly twisted one child’s arm, smashed a drone the children had and threw pieces of it at the boy, leaving him with scratches.
“We strongly condemn any manifestations of xenophobia,” the consulate said.
Polish police have confirmed receiving a criminal complaint over the incident, according to local media.
The case comes as public sentiment toward Ukrainians in Poland has hardened. Reported hate crimes targeting Ukrainians rose by more than 30% in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2025, according to police data cited by Polish media.
More than two thirds of Poles also believe Ukrainian men of military age who are not legally employed in the country should be deported, according to an IBRiS survey published last week.
Tensions between Warsaw and Kiev escalated in May after Vladimir Zelensky granted a military unit the honorary title “heroes of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army).” Poland holds the Ukrainian nationalist organization, which collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II, responsible for massacring an estimated 100,000 ethnic Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, territories now largely in western Ukraine.
Moscow has long accused Kiev of venerating Nazi collaborators and nationalist figures at the state level, while claiming Ukraine’s Western backers deliberately overlook the practice. The “denazification” of Ukraine is among Russia’s stated goals in the conflict.
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