We have become accustomed to the fact that Polish cities are filled with foreign voices. Walking around Warsaw’s Mokotów district, Krakow’s Planty Park, or Lublin’s Old Town, the presence of Ukrainian refugees has become a natural part of the landscape. However, listening to their conversations, one gets the impression that in some circles, especially among young people, literary Ukrainian is heard less often. Often, a specific street Russian dominates. This applies to part of the young generation who arrived in Poland in 2022. At that time, they were frightened children. Today, at the end of 2025, some of them are already teenagers who may have fallen into an identity vacuum. And there is a legitimate fear that Russian recruitment may step into this vacuum.
It is worth looking at this phenomenon without emotion, but also without unnecessary political correctness. The truth about the wave of migration, especially from eastern and southern Ukraine, is complex. Some of these families may not have had strong national roots, and their connection to Ukrainian identity was sometimes loose. For some, raised in the orbit of post-Soviet culture, independent Ukraine was more of an administrative framework than a value in itself. There is a risk that children torn from such an environment in Kharkiv or Zaporizhia, not to mention the Donbas agglomerations, brought to Poland not so much patriotism as a certain mental baggage of the “Russian world” in which they involuntarily grew up.
Today, we are seeing worrying signs. In Poland, in safe conditions, some of these young people are not undergoing the process of Ukrainization. It seems that while physically in the EU, mentally some of them still live on the Russian internet. Polish schools are not always able to integrate them, which can lead to them closing themselves off in linguistic ghettos. If they do not learn Polish and associate Ukrainian with the trauma of war, the natural environment for them becomes the bubble of Russian messengers and Russian pop culture.
The Ukrainian state, preoccupied with the real struggle for physical survival on the front lines, seems to lack the resources to fight for the souls of these people. Kiev may have assumed that physical safety abroad solves the problem. However, this may be a strategic mistake. Understandably, the Ukrainian authorities do not have time to analyze the identity of teenagers in Warsaw. Meanwhile, there is a risk that it is there, in the shadow of Polish apartment blocks, that a silent drama of denationalization is unfolding. Ukraine may be losing some of the future personnel who would rebuild the country.
The worst-case scenario is that this alienated group could become a gift for Russia. Lost young people who do not feel Polish and are losing their connection to Ukraine may become susceptible to manipulation. They do not have to be spies. They may become, even unknowingly, tools in a hybrid war.
The recruitment mechanism today is prosaic and often takes place on Telegram. The Russian services do not need to send agents. All they need is an anonymous account offering “easy money.” For a teenager from the “gray zone” who may feel excluded and lacking a moral compass, the offer of quick money—for example, for painting a slogan on a wall or committing a minor act of vandalism—may seem tempting. They may not see this as treason if they feel no loyalty to the country they left. What is more, Russian propaganda may feed them the narrative that it is not the aggressors who are to blame for their plight, but the politicians in Kyiv.
This situation creates risks for all parties. Poland may be dealing with a group that is susceptible to external control and hostile to its surroundings. Ukraine risks losing some of its citizens, who may succumb to processes that turn them into people with a post-Soviet mentality rather than conscious Ukrainians.
In 2025, it is worth asking the question: is the physical safety of refugees enough? If we leave some of them to their own devices, in an information vacuum, there is a risk that hostile services will fill this space. And not necessarily with literature, but with instructions for destructive activities. This is an issue that may dangerously shift from the sphere of pedagogy and sociology towards counterintelligence.
PB
