“Project Trident” Aims To Thwart A Post-Conflict Ukrainian Crime Wave In Poland

Traumatized veterans, many of whom are ultra-nationalists, might also try to lead another Ukrainian insurgency in Poland aimed at severing the southeastern part of the country.

Rzeczpospolita recently reported that “When the war ends, Poland will be flooded with weapons from Ukraine. The police are already preparing for this.” To that end, “equipment for detecting phone traffic, tracking and surveillance in various ranges, both electronic and optical, as well as using unmanned aerial vehicles” will be used as will vehicle x-ray scanners. The police will cooperate with the Border Guard and, for what it’s worth, Ukraine too. It goes without saying, however, that they’ll spy on Ukraine as well.

Codenamed “Project Trident”, this newfound national security effort demonstrates that Poland is finally waking up to Ukrainian-emanating unconventional security threats, which comes 15 months after former President Andrzej Duda warned that traumatized veterans could lead a continental crime wave. Rzeczpospolita didn’t mention it in their report, and perhaps some authorities are still unaware of this complementary threat, but these same veterans could lead another Ukrainian insurgency in Poland.

For background, the first Ukrainian insurgency was “Khmelnitsky’s Uprising” in the mid-17^th century, and then there was the “Koliszczyzna” a century later. Both resulted in the large-scale massacre, arguably a genocide, of Poles (and Jews too). Then there was the Polish-Ukrainian War right after World War I, the 1930s Ukrainian insurgency, the separate one that paralleled the Nazi invasion, the World War II-era Volhynia Genocide, and finally the post-war Ukrainian insurgency that prompted “Operation Vistula”.

Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, which count many veterans among them, believe that southeastern Poland is occupied Ukrainian land. The current leader of the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” (OUN) that was responsible for the Volhynia Genocide implicitly threatened Poland on this basis as was explained here in fall 2024. The summer prior, Zelensky’s top advisor Mikhail Podolyak ominously predicted a post-conflict competition with Poland, and it’s possible that traumatized veterans could play a role therein.

To make matters even worse, “The Ukrainian Ambassador To Poland Admitted That His Co-Ethnics Don’t Want To Assimilate” just last fall, and then he shocked Poles last month by refusing to describe Volhynia Genocide co-organizers Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich as criminals. Interspersed between these provocations, Ukrainian media happily predicted the formation of an ethnic Ukrainian lobby in the Sejm, and it can’t be ruled out that this bloc might one day support “reunification” with Ukraine.

As was argued here in spring 2024, former conservative President Andrzej Duda’s veto of the liberal-controlled Sejm’s bill to make Silesian a regional language might have aimed to create the precedent for denying the same to Ukrainians, thus explaining his successor Karol Nawrocki’s veto earlier this year too. Poland’s preemptive defense of its territorial integrity in the face of credibly latent Ukrainian revisionist threats is now expanding into the physical security domain through “Project Trident” as is seen.

The aforesaid threat is too politically sensitive for the Polish authorities to explicitly discuss, but average Poles have no such concerns and regularly warn about it on social media. Public opinion has also been shifting in recent years against both Ukraine and its refugees in Poland. Poles are therefore ready for a much tougher policy towards Ukraine, but it might not be implemented till after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, and only if a conservative-populist coalition replaces the current Ukrainophilic liberal one.