Korybko To Tim Kirby: Here’s My Critical Review Of Your Article On Polish-Ukrainian Tensions

I consider Tim a friend and respect his hard-earned authority within the “Non-Russian Pro-Russian” community, the International Russophile Movement, and among many highly esteemed people here in Russia, and that’s why I wanted to critically review his article in detail.

Spokesman of the International Russophile Movement Tim Kirby published an interesting piece at the Strategic Culture Foundation titled “Poland and Ukraine at odds: Betrayal, Misunderstanding or Pro-Wrestling?” I know Tim personally, he’s a very cool guy, and we’re coincidentally from the same hometown of Cleveland, albeit from different sides and didn’t know each other back then. His Telegram channel is also worth following for news updates and his takes on subjects of relevance to Russia.

I consider Tim a friend and respect his hard-earned authority within the “Non-Russian Pro-Russian” community, the International Russophile Movement, and among many highly esteemed people here in Russia, and that’s why I wanted to critically review his article in detail. I already critically reviewed two of Timofei Bordachev’s on Poland here and here as well as Ilya Fabrichnkov’s recent one here so it’s becoming a tradition for me to critically review Polish-related articles from significant figures in Russia.

If readers aren’t aware, I’m a proud American-Pole (dual citizenship but born and raised in the US), but I’m also an admittedly rare Russophilic Polish Nationalist. Without exaggeration, I consider it my life’s task to bridge the differences between Poland/Poles and Russia/Russians, which I admit is a herculean task that I very well might never accomplish but which I’ll always try my best to do. Critically reviewing Polish-related articles from significant figures in Russia aims to inform them of the Polish perspective.

That’s not to say that I agree with all the perspectives that I share for this purpose, just that there’s a dearth of expertise on Poland in Russia, so sharing such perspectives is meant to help these significant figures in Russia better understand what their Polish peers most likely believe. This in turn could make the hypothetical resumption of dialogue between them much more effective if it ever comes to pass than if they relied on inaccurate assumptions about their beliefs and Polish policies.

In this particular context, I’ll critically review Tim’s article the same way that I reviewed Bordachev’s by highlighting particular parts of the text and then responding to the points therein due to my sincere belief that clarifying them can help advance my abovementioned goal. I’ll then conclude with a summary of what I believe to be behind the spiraling Polish-Ukrainian dispute and include an appendix at the end of all my work on this subject since their dispute exploded in late May:

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* “But regardless of their true numbers, in terms of infantry (Korybko Note: the mercenaries that Tim earlier wrote that the Kremlin considers to be ‘regular Polish troops sheep-dipped into this role’), Poland has been the number one supporter of the war against Russia for years now.”

- While the Russian Defense Ministry reported in March 2024 that Poles comprised the largest number of mercenaries in Ukraine (5,962/13,387), TASS cited a French reporter working in Donbass in April 2026 who claimed that only 97 of the 6,022 mercenaries that he identified out of up to 25,000 are Poles.

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* “Just like in every former member of the USSR/Warsaw Pact many such politicians were looking for all sorts of historical reasons to justify hatred of the Russians.”

- Average Poles dislike the Russian State – which most don’t conflate with the Russian People – for well-known historical reasons beyond the scope of this analysis to detail.

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* “The partitioning of Poland is always blamed on Russia despite it being divided into three pieces. Two of the other dividers are in the EU and thus quietly never mentioned to the teenagers of Poland.”

- All Poles are taught that Austria, Prussia, and Russia partitioned Poland, but Russia played the main role. Conservatives like President Karol Nawrocki are also extremely critical of Germany and the EU.

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* “The second divide of the nation at the dawn of WWII is often blamed on the USSR trying to conquer them, yet the fact that Moscow chose to restore Poland after the conflict is a very ineffective form of conquest when one sits down and thinks about it. Furthermore, who got all of those fine Polish commoners out of the German concentration camps?”

- The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact divided Poland and the entrance of Soviet troops into Poland is seen by Poles as an invasion. The restoration of Polish Statehood, which Poles believe was done for pragmatic reasons, only came after the Soviet counteroffensive against the Nazis. The end of the Nazi Genocide of Poles was also an outcome of the Red Army’s march to Berlin, not an official military objective (e.g. the Red Army didn’t intervene during the Warsaw Uprising despite being just across the Vistula River).

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* “Russian heroes Pozharsky and Minin drove out the Polish-Lithuanians during the ‘Time of Troubles’ but did not go to Poland to take revenge on normies. Unlike in Kiev, Moscow has no official heroes, whose heroism involved massacring normal everyday Poles in their homeland.”

- Russia was too weak after the Time of Troubles to invade Poland, but it later invaded and ultimately partitioned it, including at the cost of civilian lives like what happens in all wars. Many Russian heroes from those conflicts are seen by Poles as villains, some of whom they claim slaughtered Polish civilians.

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* “Forcing Poland down the path of Communism is something people are still angry about in Eastern Europe and beyond, but the Russians went down the exact same doomed road and paid heavily for switching systems too.”

- Poles consider themselves to be part of Central Europe, not Eastern Europe, and most average Poles now understand that the USSR (especially at the time of communism’s post-war imposition upon their country) wasn’t led by Russians even though it was the geopolitical successor of the Russian Empire.

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* “The Russophobic propagandists of Warsaw ultimately came up empty, which is why the interpretation of the Volyn Massacre was a hot issue to drum up hatred for Russia for many years.”

- From the Polish perspective, every preceding critique of the Imperial and Soviet States is legitimate, not “propaganda”. It’s also Banderists, not Poles, that sometimes blame the Volhynia Genocide on the USSR.

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* “Polish politicians will now and probably for the foreseeable future have an instinctual hatred of Moscow, but the majority of them were absolutely well aware that the Banderite legacy was and is strong in Kiev from the very beginning of its revival and that it is the real perpetrator of crimes against ethnic Poles. Zelensky showing support for certain ‘heroes’ in 2026 is no different than him showing support for them in 2022. They chose to turn a blind eye to all this until they actively decided to see it.”

- This is all true but requires clarification: the “instinctual hatred of Moscow” is mostly due to Poles’ historical experience with the Imperial and Soviet States from the mid-17^th century onward; no Polish politician to the best of my knowledge ever blamed the Volhynia Genocide on the USSR; Zelensky’s state-level glorification of the genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits in May importantly occurred during the tenure of historian-turned-president Nawrocki; and he’s the one who made this a big deal as I’ll explain later.

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* “It was the new generation of ‘Heroes of the UPA’ that marched and won at the Maidan in 2014 then carried out ethnic cleansings of Russians in the Donbass as part of the ATO. They used the exact same symbols, terminology and at times even uniforms.”

- The killing of Donbass’ ethnic Russians by Bandera-glorifying Ukrainians from 2014-2022 was a crime against humanity, but the 13,000-14,000 that Putin cited in March 2022 as having been killed during those eight years is one-seventh of the at least 100,000 Volhynia Genocide victims from 1943-1945.

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* “Almost all Polish politicians should have been aware of this, but then again geopolitically weaker nations are often forced to act in hypocritical ways at bayonet point and Poland is certainly no exception.”

- Polish politicians were indeed aware of Ukraine’s descent into Banderism and its evolution into an anti-Polish state, but they still supported Ukraine on their own initiative without needing to be “forced” due to their belief that Poland’s raison d’état is for Ukraine to kill Russians like Nawrocki just boasted about.

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* “This medal annulment scandal looks to be manufactured outrage by Warsaw but why?”

- My understanding of this dispute will be shared in detail after responding to Tim’s explanations below.

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* “There has been a move to deport Ukrainians from Poland, especially fighting age Ukrainian men, sending them back home to die against the Russians. Perhaps deportation is the name of the game. If there is anything the West loves, it is using Slavs as expendable meat shields and Poland would probably rather fill the ranks down south with outsiders than with their own.”

- The proposed deportation of unemployed and illegally employed Ukrainian males of draft age was made by the conservative opposition, which has no power to implement it unless they return to power after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections. It was also rejected by the ruling liberal coalition’s Coordinator of the Special Services so it’s unlikely to happen till at least after the next elections and only if they lose.

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* “We actually are entering a Multipolar World. Perhaps Washington/London/Brussels are not willing or able to force more Polish citizens to die for their plantation masters, and thus this is a stalling tactic. After the massive retaliatory strikes in the summer of 2026 by the Kremlin it is possible that Warsaw can already feel where the wind is blowing and wants to at least freeze their participation in place as this thing winds down.”

- As was clarified above, Poland wasn’t “forced” to support Ukraine, it did so on its own initiative. Its mercenaries, even if they were recently soldiers who were allowed to go on leave to fight in Ukraine, did so voluntarily. In fact, mercenary activity is illegal in Poland, and it wasn’t till this spring that the Sejm passed an amnesty bill. The spiraling Polish-Ukrainian dispute also began in late May prior to Russia’s summertime strikes. Polish aid to Ukraine also dropped after 2023 upon the depletion of its stockpiles.

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* “There may be conspiracy theories that there is a secret deal over Ukrainian land between Warsaw and Moscow, but ultimately the Polish public has never been told that this is a war of expansion to create a Greater Poland.”

- I shared five reasonable arguments against claims of Polish revanchism vis-à-vis Ukraine in the article about Eastern Lesser Poland that I’ll hyperlink to here for convenience and which will be shared separately in the appendix.

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* “Having a political off-ramp is always a good thing, especially if your intelligence services are starting to confirm that Kiev is falling apart, the big swerve off the Zelensky highway is something Warsaw could want the ability to do at a moment’s notice.”

- The speech in which Nawrocki made his boast about how Poland’s raison d’état is for Ukraine to kill Russians also saw him declare that “our interest is for them to fight as long and as efficiently as possible”, though he clarified that Poland’s interests will come first in an allusion to its depleted stockpiles.

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* “Russia’s greatest weakness is the shocking naiveté of its citizenry, and perhaps this is some fake drama to try to sucker the Russians into thinking ‘it’s over’ thus, causing them to change some policies prematurely. Or it could be the old trick to make them think that Poland ‘wants to be friends again’. Russia’s desire to be friends with its enemies has led to catastrophic results and it sure is an exploitable weakness that works time-and-time again. “

- The spiraling Polish-Ukrainian dispute is very real like I’ll explain below right after this, it’s not kayfabe for psyching Russia out. Nawrocki’s abovementioned speech also saw him slur Russians as “Moskals”, which provoked a furious condemnation from Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, so Russia isn’t under any illusions about the Polish State’s hostility regardless of whoever is leading it and no matter what its ties with Ukraine might be like at any given time.

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Having critically reviewed Tim’s article in detail, it’s now time for me to share my understanding of the spiraling Polish-Ukrainian dispute. For background, Poland has been very politically divided since at least 2015 as proven by the very narrow margins with which its presidents won victory every five years, while parliament has oscillated between liberal and conservative control since even earlier. Although nominally independent, Nawrocki was endorsed by the conservative opposition, which wants to regain power in fall 2027.

He therefore had partial electioneering motives in mind when threatening to revoke the Order of the White Eagle from Zelensky (and then doing it) after the Ukrainian leader renamed an elite commando unit after the “Heroes of UPA”, but since he’s also an historian, he probably really was disgusted by this. Germany had already by then become Ukraine’s second-largest donor, and Ukraine was already leading much closer to Berlin than to Warsaw, arguably due in part to the ruling Banderists’ Polonophobia.

Zelensky too therefore had some political motives in mind by renaming that elite commando unit in order to blatantly disrespect Poland (and not for the first time) and thus distract the militant Banderists’ below him from Ukraine’s continued setbacks in its large-scale conflict with Russia. He apparently expected that Nawrocki would remain silent like his predecessor Andrzej Duda did every time he earlier glorified the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits, but he miscalculated him and anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland.

The aforesaid sentiment is very real and a major political factor ahead of fall 2027’s next elections, yet liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his coalition also miscalculated it by initially criticizing Nawrocki for revoking the Order of the White Eagle till public opinion forced a course correction. The subsequent worsening of Polish-Ukrainian tensions is therefore a combination of natural inertia, each side’s domestic political calculations, and Poles’ sincere demand for historical justice over the Volhynia Genocide.

In closing, all Polish and Russians experts who’d like clarification on the other’s perspectives with a view towards making the hypothetical resumption of dialogue between them more effective can contact me on social media or my Substack (i.e. subscribe and then directly message me). I promise to keep all discussions on this subject discreet and not reveal that we’re in communication. I sincerely want to help as I consider it my life’s task to bridge the differences between Poland/Poles and Russia/Russians.

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* 21 May 2026: Ukraine’s Decision To Rebury A Top Hitler Collaborator With State Honors Infuriates Poles

* 29 May 2026: Nawrocki Plans To Revoke Poland’s Highest Honor From Zelensky After His UPA Scandal

* 30 May 2026: Ukraine Is Now Indisputably An Anti-Polish State

* 30 May 2026: Here’s Why I’m A Proud Volhynia Genocide Activist

* 31 May 2026: Debunking The OUN-UPA’s “Anti-Imperialist” Narrative

* 1 June 2026: Ukrainians Are Wrong: Putin Doesn’t Benefit From The Volhynia Genocide Dispute

* 2 June 2026: Ukraine’s Transformation Into An Anti-Polish State Wasn’t Inevitable

* 3 June 2026: What Role Did Germany Play In Ukraine’s Transformation Into An Anti-Polish State?

* 4 June 2026: A Top Polish Expert Warned That Ukraine Might Scapegoat Poland For Its Loss To Russia

* 5 June 2026: The Polish Opposition’s PM Candidate Alleged That Zelensky Is Serving Russia’s Interests

* 21 June 2026: Ukraine Is Expected To Pivot Closer To Germany Amidst Its Escalating UPA Feud With Poland

* 21 June 2026: Three Politically Difficult Policy Changes Could Instantly Improve Russia’s Image In Poles’ Eyes

* 22 June 2026: Ukraine Will Never Join The EU As Long As Nawrocki Remains President Of Poland

* 23 June 2026: Zelensky’s Interview Poured Fuel On The Flames Of His Spiraling UPA Dispute With Poland

* 24 June 2026: Zelensky Lied Through His Teeth About What Happened During Budanov’s Trip To Poland

* 25 June 2026: Przemysław Piasta Has A Point: Post-Conflict Ukraine Will Pose A Serious Threat To Poland

* 27 June 2026: Lvov’s Waste Incinerator Scandal Exemplifies Poland’s Uphill Battle For Reconstruction Contracts

* 29 June 2026: A Senior Ukrainian Sergeant Threatened Poland With Drone Strikes Against Its Cities

* 30 June 2026: Nawrocki Suggested Three Polish-Approved Figures Whom Ukraine Should Glorify Instead Of Bandera

* 30 June 2026: Why’d Ukraine Renege On Its Drones-For-MiGs Deal With Poland?

* 1 July 2026: Budanov Loyally Joined Zelensky’s Personal War Against Nawrocki & Poles

* 2 July 2026: Poland Could Quickly Denazify Ukraine Without Firing A Single Shot But Tusk Refuses To Do So

* 3 July 2026: Grzegorz Braun Shared A Five-Point Proposal For How Poland Should Respond To Ukraine

* 3 July 2026: Ukraine’s “National Pantheon” Will Destroy Political Ties With Poland

* 4 July 2026: Poland’s Former Ambassador To Ukraine Spoke Up About Kiev’s Discrimination Against Poles

* 5 July 2026: Public Pressure Is Pushing Poland’s Ruling Liberals To Harden Their Approach To Ukraine

* 5 July 2026: Ukraine’s Chief Fact-Checker Lied: There’s Nothing Fake In The FSB’s Declassified Volhynia File

* 6 July 2026: The Polish-Ukrainian Dispute Is Taking On Yet Another Security-Related Dimension

* 6 July 2026: Poland Finally Realizes The Geostrategic Challenge That Ukraine Poses To It

* 7 July 2026: Bogucki’s Reference To Eastern Lesser Poland Doesn’t Imply Territorial Claims To Ukraine

* 7 July 2026: Budanov’s False Comparison Of Poland With Russia Is Kiev’s Latest Escalation In Their Dispute

* 8 July 2026: Ukraine’s Planned Drone Plants In The Baltics Are Part Of A Plot To Outflank Poland

* 9 July 2026: Poles Now Believe That Ukrainians Are Civilizationally Incompatible With The West

* 10 July 2026: The European Parliament’s Criticism Of Zelensky’s OUN-UPA Glorification Is A Positive Step

* 11 July 2026: Why’d Poland’s Ruling Duopoly Arm The Ukrainian Followers Of Their Ancestors’ Killers?

* 12 July 2026: A Polish Diplomat’s Scandalous Remarks Marred This Year’s Volhynia Genocide Remembrance Day

* 13 July 2026: A Top Polish Journalist Declared The End Of His Country’s Decades-Long Policy Towards Ukraine

* 14 July 2026: The Polish Opposition’s PM Candidate Called On The EU To Stop Funding Ukrainian Arms

* 15 July 2026: Five Reasons Why Poland Won’t Deploy Troops To Ukraine

* 16 July 2026: Nearly Half Of Poles Now Want To Stop Arming Ukraine

* 18 July 2026: Why’d The Baltic States Betray Poland At The European Parliament In Defense Of The UPA?

* 19 July 2026: Poles Shouldn’t Let Themselves Be Duped By Zelensky’s Dishonest Reconciliation Attempt

* 20 July 2026: Korybko To Kosiniak-Kamysz: Defending Poland’s Skies Is More Important Than Defending Ukraine’s

* 29 July 2026: Poland’s Trilateral Patriot Production Proposal Throws A Wrench In Ukraine’s Plans

* 29 July 2026: Korybko To Fabrichnikov: Any Hypothetical Russian-Polish Talks Must Have A Realistic Agenda

* 7 August 2026: Polish Polarization Over Ukraine Is Likely The New Normal

* 8 August 2026: Ukraine’s Outgoing Ambassador To Poland Once Again Spit In Poles’ Faces

* 9 August 2026: Korybko To Nawrocki & Medvedev: Ethno-Nationalist Slurs & Violent Threats Are Self-Discrediting

* 10 August 2026: Nawrocki Envisages Poland Playing The Leading Role in Containing Russia