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I think the key difference, more so than racism, was context. The Middle Eastern refugees got there as an attempt to undermine Poland and the EU. They were transported there by Belarus explicitly as part of a geopolitical game.

You treat an attack very differently.

If Poland let the refugees in, I expect Belarus would pull more stunts like this. It was no good for anyone.

There is some mild tension with Ukrainians coming to Poland as low-cost labor, but at the end of the day, it's the same culture. Or at least it was before Poland started to Westernize its culture. Honestly, I think the right solution here is to reform the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine really ought to be one country. If Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, or Moldova want to join in, the more the merrier. Belarus and Russia, when they're ready.

Estonia, by the way, is the odd man out. It has the least cultural or ethnic connection; much less than you'd expect. But I think it'd be a happy marriage. It's a compatible kind of diversity, where each side brings something complementary rather than conflicting and both sides benefit.

Also one difference is that The Ukrainians only let children and women leave the country. Men 18-60 are not allowed to leave. So the people coming over are truly vulnerable.

No, that's not a difference. Poland has been preparing to welcome Ukrainians long before the invasion started. It had opened up its borders and had logistic ready to receive them as soon as Russia invaded.

All of this happened before Ukraine closed its borders to fighting-age men.

I don't think making bigger countries is a good idea.

(But then, I like my adopted city state home. So I might be biased.)

Tear down the borders between countries instead as much as possible. Like eg the EU does (despite all its other faults).

It’s not about “letting them in”, it’s about protecting the border without breaking the law. Poland chose to do illegal pushback instead, effectively killing some two dozen random civilians.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/09/poland-be...

Estonia is much more integrated to Finland these days...

There is a subtle difference between cutting border fence and going through border checkpoint. During Belarus crisis those who went for asylum request were considered. Those who hid in forest did not. Some were not granted asylum as they came from stable country. Simple as that.

Poland has ties to Ukraine (especially western part) stretching for more than a thousand years. Recent decades the relationship was quite positive. It is almost same people.

Poland has bitter painful recent memory of aggression from Soviet Union just recently. Now there is a real risk obliteration of whole Ukraine, who just recently got independence after hundreds of years of invasion.

To be fair, hundreds of years of invasion kind of describes every country on the planet. Maybe you mean occupation, here?

But also, most countries have had endlessly shifting borders, with endlessly shifting immigration, emigration, and cultures are a result.

All current states, are at best a few hundred years old, really.

Portugal is 900 years old and its borders are virtually unchanged since the 1297 Treaty of Alcañices.

England has had mostly unchanged borders since 927!

Modulo the old colonies. Brazil for about 200 years, the African colonies in 1974, and Macao and East Timor even later.

> Now not so good tidbit. Just few months ago we had a lot of people lured into Belarus by Lukashenko trying to come to Europe. Poland treated them really really poorly.

Those people were from the middle east, pakistan, afghanistan and so on no? A big difference when it's your neighbor in need.

>Those people were from the middle east, pakistan, afghanistan and so on no? A big difference when it's your neighbor.

There are many people from the Middle East living, studying and working in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechia, etc. without any issues. One for them is my dentist and another in engaged to one of my cousins and is studying medicine to become a doctor.

The big difference is they came here legally and with money, studies, jobs or skills to support themselves, so the locals only have an issues with the illegal economic chancers trying to game the asylum and welfare systems, and nothing against people from the Middle East.

Those welfare migrants usually end up in countries like Sweden or Germany anyway, where whatever is left of the middle class taxpayer, is "happy" to give away half their income to support them indefinitely, with the wishful thinking that they will eventually contribute to their economy, pension system, and reverse the declining birthrates. At least they were right about the latter.

Also slightly different because in the Middle East, it's the Poles (and other pearl-clutching Europeans) that are over there arming and training the rebels, sending "peace keeping" forces, overthrowing governments and trying to partition their countries. It's not exactly a breakaway from the normal Western hypocrisy to see that they don't treat refugees from those countries well.

What the Poles see when they look at Ukranians are the same thing that most of the anglosphere sees -- fair skinned Caucasians. That's why "everyone" cares and why this relatively uneventful situation is getting this amount of news coverage.

That's why "everyone" cares and why this relatively uneventful situation is getting this amount of news coverage

You must know very little of history, to think coverage is only due to race.

Show me another country with the same nuclear arsenal, or with the military might, invading countries this large, in a location which has started two world wars.

Playing the race card is... weak.

> You must know very little of history, to think coverage is only due to race.

Exclusively due to race.

> Show me another country with the same nuclear arsenal, or with the military might, invading countries this large, in a location which has started two world wars

Might as well say "show me another country also named Ukraine." How about Syria? Where Poland, specifically, sent its forces to train separatist rebel groups and had an airforce positioned to support the rebel offensives? Help me understand the difference, considering when refugees from Syria get to Poland they're rounded up, beaten up and expelled.

> Playing the race card is... weak.

Calling it weak helps skirt around the cognitive dissonance at seeing two tragedies, exactly the same barring ethnicity, and fabricating scenarios that justify one and disregard the other. The same people who are fascinated with what's happening in Ukraine are the same ones who had "Je suis Charlie" over their Facebook profile photos in 2015. They see fair skinned Europeans in crisis and their opinions change dramatically. This is an extension of missing white woman syndrome[0] and part of the training the Western world receives as children to disregard the suffering of non-anglophone and non-Europeans.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

You're missing the whole point. The conflicts are not even remotely the same.

If Poland invade the Ukraine, most people wouldn't be 1/10th as interested.

It is almost like you have no grasp of the history of NATO, the USSR, two world wars, nuclear weapons, and the power to deploy military might.

Can rebels in Syria destroy the entire planet with nukes? Can a conflict in Syria cause all NATO nations to be pulled into mutual defense agreements?

Quite literally, this single act of Russia's could have the potential result of turning entire planet into ash, or dragging 100 countries to war, or seeing a new empire carved out.

And I haven't even discussed China's role in all of this, current and future.

This invasion, this single act, could result in billions dying.

But sure, it's all just about race.

It's almost as if you don't comprehend that Syria is a theatre that contains both the US and Russia who both have nukes. Ukraine does not have nukes. In Ukraine, there is only Russia and Ukranians. In Syria, we have at least Turkey, the US and Russia all engaged in direct combat with at least a dozen NATO countries having troops stationed there.

The rebels in Syria can't destroy the planet with nukes... and neither can the rebels in Ukraine. The conflict in Syria has a higher likelihood of pulling in NATO members considering NATO is already in Syria, with Russia, the US and Turkey all engaging in direct combat there.

> Quite literally, this single act of Russia's could have the potential result of turning entire planet into ash, or dragging 100 countries to war, or seeing a new empire carved out.

Except none of that is true. You know, because Ukraine is not a part of NATO and there are literally no NATO forces in Ukraine?

It's funny how you seem to ignore that NATO nations are already engaged in war with Russia's proxies in Syria -- in some cases seeing direct confrontation -- but somehow Ukraine is the one that matters. But it's not about race.

> This invasion, this single act, could result in billions dying.

The single act being invading a country filled with fair skinned Caucasians, you mean.

> But sure, it's all just about race.

Considering the pearl clutchers happily armed the rebels in Syria and supported its partition, and are now crying doom and gloom when Russia does the same in Ukraine, then it is about race.

Let me know when the Polaks on the far right start kicking up a stink about the European refugees about to enter the country and you'll hopefully start to see it's all about ethnicity.

Adding some more context. The Ukrainian refugees are fellow Slavic people and the refugees from last time were mostly Muslims from the Middle East... and that the Far-Right tends to be racist.

While the fact that Ukrainians belong to the same ethnicity as Poles definitely makes a difference in how people react, another fact that counts is that the Middle Eastern refugees did not get to Poland directly from a war zone, and they did not intend to seek asylum in Poland, they were flown into a peaceful country, Belarus, and were seeking to reach the richer countries of Europe like Germany, Sweden and the UK... Poland was just their second transit country after Belarus. I think that even discounting race, this is a big difference that we cannot simply forget about.

They are all white race. Maybe you should use the word ethnicist or religionist?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_racism

"Several academics have critiqued the use of cultural racism to describe prejudices and discrimination on the basis of cultural difference. Those who reserve the term racism for biological racism for instance do not believe that cultural racism is a useful or appropriate concept."

> There is over 100 cars long queue at a border willing to transport Ukrainians escaping war where they want. They can travel by train for free in Poland.

That's fantastic. A person I know is in Ukraine (currently at the border with Poland, AFAIK) and he reports multiple-kilometer long queues of people on foot trying to cross the border. It sounds like they'll need all the help they can get.

Wasn’t the incident in Belarus an attempt by Lukashenko to mess with the EU?

I mean he basically flew refugees from the Middle East to Belarus for the purpose of putting them in Poland border and embarrassing Poland.

When a foreign power is trying to violate a neighbors borders, it’s fair to talk about protecting your borders.

Is anyone actually OK with Poland taking any refugee Lukashenko leaves at your border?

Same in Romania, the boarders are jammed with romanian citizens providing aid, shelter and transport. I am actually amazed, there is so much help that charities are overwhelmed. People are taking ukrainians in their homes.

Russia will lose.

Same. While polish society is hugely racist towards refugees from Middle East, largely because of a government’s massive hate campaign from a few years ago, it seems polish nationalists failed to achieve the same against Ukrainians - probably thanks to the fact that many Ukrainians already live and Poland, so people can see for themselves there is no reason to hate them.

Poland has a collective memory of Russian oppression and aggression

Maybe it's time to stop cultivating this hatred. Otherwise, you’ll have to keep hating other nations. It's a road to hatred hell - many countries and nations in Europe had conflicts.

Separate a regime from a nation. I don't know any Russian (I’m Russian in Spain) who would have any negativity to the Poles. Maybe it would be better to stop the hatred from another side as well.

I was advocating for arming Belarus rebels from Poland, and Lithuania.

If we had free Belarus by today, this war wouldn't have happened.

Without constant pressure on the capital, Ukrainian military would have easy time doing a general offensive on southern direction, or maybe even reaching Rostov, and Volgograd.

It was very appaling to see Polish government initially agreeing to sneak in weapons bought by volunteers, and then detaining it on the border.