Don't let this happen
From the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Poland emerged as Ukraine’s staunchest ally. Poland pushed the West to wake up, to act, to stand firm against Russia’s aggression. It lobbied relentlessly, both diplomatically and in backdoor negotiations, urging hesitant Western capitals to commit real support to Ukraine. On the battlefield too, Poland was among the first to deliver critical arms, especially in the war’s chaotic opening year, when delays could have been fatal.
But crucially, it wasn’t only the Polish government that rallied. The Polish people opened their homes, their hearts, and their borders. Ukrainian refugees – mostly women, children, the elderly – were met with open arms. I still remember hearing Polish volunteers at the border speak on camera. Their voices trembled with emotion as they explained that they couldn’t just watch this tragedy unfold from the sidelines. They said they loved Ukrainians, and it was their deepest desire to help Ukrainian people. And you could feel they meant it.
For a moment, it felt like something larger was being born – a vision long buried but never forgotten. The old Intermarium dream, once championed by Józef Piłsudski: a strategic alliance of Central and Eastern European states united against Russian imperialism. Suddenly, that idea wasn’t just an old mapmaker’s fantasy. Poland and Ukraine, bound by shared suffering and mutual purpose, looked poised to become the backbone of a new geopolitical reality.
But then something shifted.
Tensions started to creep in last year over Ukrainian grain exports. What began as a policy dispute spiraled into something uglier. Polish truckers, later joined by Slovak and Hungarian counterparts, blockaded Ukrainian cargo trucks. Frustration curdled into resentment. Soon, the historical ghosts returned. In Polish public discourse, old wounds were reopened – Volhynian massacres and the contested legacy of Stepan Bandera. Once marginal topics began to gain traction in headlines and official speeches.
Even former president Andrzej Duda – long a steadfast friend to Ukraine – spoke out bitterly in one of his final interviews. He couldn’t understand, he said, how Ukrainian officials could embrace him warmly while wearing the red-and-black insignia of the UPA, a group responsible for atrocities against Poles. “Poland will never accept this” he said, drawing a firm line. To Poles, Bandera and his followers were not heroes – they were criminals.
His successor, nationalist Karol Nawrocki, has taken that line further, proposing legislation that would criminalize UPA symbols in Poland, equating them with Nazi and Soviet iconography. Other officials have gone so far as to threaten a veto of Ukraine’s EU membership unless Kyiv formally apologizes for Volhynian massacres and allows the exhumation of Polish graves.
This spiral of recrimination could not come at a worse time – if there were ever a good time for it at all.
Europe stands today on a precipice. Central and Eastern European nations, in particular, face a civilizational threat in the form of a resurgent, unrepentant Russia. To let historical grievances fracture unity now is to play directly into the hands of the Kremlin. Whatever wrongs Poles and Ukrainians committed against each other in the past, they are dwarfed by the scale and brutality both of these peoples endured at the hands of Russians for centuries, and Ukrainians continue to endure now.
This is not the moment to divide over flags, insignia and historical grievances. This is the moment to understand what’s at stake. Europe’s survival depends on solidarity. The priorities should be set straight. Russia is the single greatest evil currently threatening European Civilization and Europeans must stand together.
And yet, despite everything Russia has done – and despite the long, painful lessons of the past – not everyone in Europe seems to understand the stakes. As the war drags on, an old, familiar rot has begun to surface once again: the quiet reawakening of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in parts of Polish society. The specter of petty nationalism, long buried but never fully gone, is haunting Europe once more – just when unity is most vital.
It’s hard not to be reminded of another fateful chapter in this region’s history: the years 1920–1921. Back then, too, Poland and Ukraine stood shoulder to shoulder against a Russian invasion. Poland, under Józef Piłsudski, had just pulled off the improbable victory at the Battle of Warsaw – the so-called Miracle on the Vistula – stopping the Red Army’s advance into Europe. He had done so not alone, but in alliance with Symon Petliura’s Ukrainian forces. Together, they had the momentum. The Red Army had been driven out of Poland. Full liberation of Ukraine – and with it, a strategic transformation of Eastern Europe – was within reach.
The defeat of the Soviet Imperialists, the window of opportunity that was missed
But just as total victory seemed so near, something gave out.
In Poland, Piłsudski’s vision – a free and sovereign Ukraine as one of the cornerstones of a Central and Eastern European alliance – was under assault from within. The National Democracy movement, led by Roman Dmowski, opposed any partnership with Ukraine. Obsessed with petty nationalist sentiments and territorial claims to cities like Lviv, and willing to strike a bargain with Russia if it preserved Poland’s perceived national interests, they pushed back hard against Piłsudski’s plans. And in the end, they won.
Poland abandoned the alliance. It signed a separate peace with Soviet Russia – the Treaty of Riga in 1921 – securing temporary calm for itself while leaving Ukraine to face the Red Army alone. Ukraine was crushed, absorbed into the Soviet Union, and subjected to the horrors of Russian rule: forced collectivization, cultural erasure, mass executions, and the man-made famine of the Holodomor.
Poland, having thought itself safe, would learn the truth soon enough. And learn it the hard way. Twenty years later, it too would be overrun and brutalized by the very same power it had once thought it could appease at the expense of abandoning Ukraine and satisfying its petty short-term interests.
History, it seems, is circling back.
Once again, the region finds itself at a crossroads. And once again, the old curse threatens to return: the curse of parochialism, of small-minded nationalism, of clinging to ancient grudges at the expense of a broader, more holistic vision. We see it not just in the resurgence of anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in Poland, but in the broader region. The PiS government has stoked anti-German sentiment, demanding war reparations and reviving grievances better left buried. Poland remains fixated on Volhynian massacres and the figure of Stepan Bandera, refusing to contextualize these wounds within the larger war of survival Ukraine is fighting today.
Stephan Bandera, the poster boy of petty nationalist squabbling
Moreover, the staunchly anti-Ukrainian and anti-German, petty nationalist party Konfederacja (Confederation) has been steadily gaining votes. Recently, they staged a grotesque publicity stunt in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on the anniversary of Warsaw Uprising. Their aim was to shame Germany, to reopen historical wounds, to force remembrance through humiliation. But conspicuously, being fixated on historical grievances against Germany and Ukraine, they never seem to remind Russians of having killed and brutalized even more Poles throughout history than Nazi Germany did.
Why this selective outrage? Why does Konfederacja choose to remind Germany of the dark episodes of its past, when Germans – the great, civilized cultured nation – had repeatedly and sincerely apologized (even over-apologized) for those crimes? And at a time when Germany and Poland share common destiny and are allies in an existential war against their common civilizational nemesis – Russia?
Moreover, the Polish figures who like to bring reparation claims against Germany, somehow do not bring similar claims against Russia. Is it because they know that Germans, a civilized culture nation, can be pushed around like this, while Russians, shameless and immune to moral appeals, cannot? Or perhaps the deeper reason is more disturbing: that some in Polish political life see Germany – not Russia – as the greater threat; that they hate the cultured and penitent Germans, their civilizational kin and natural allies, more than the barbaric and proud Russians – their greatest civilizational nemesis.
This, too, is what petty nationalism does. It warps moral vision. It lashes out at kin who kneel in remorse, while ignoring the real enemy who still holds the knife.
In Hungary, in turn, Viktor Orbán’s government continues to stir resentment over the Treaty of Trianon, accusing Ukraine – without evidence – of mistreating its Hungarian minority. In Romania, nationalist politicians like Călin Georgescu and George Simion fan tensions over Bessarabia and Bukovina, invoking historical claims that only serve to fracture regional unity.
These pathologies – these old tribal reflexes – are exactly what Russia bets on. Fragmented, feuding, and mistrustful, Eastern Europe cannot stand. United, it can. The lesson of the 20th century should be burned into the region’s memory: no country in Europe is safe on its own.
But the crisis facing Europe is not only geopolitical. It is also moral and civilizational. While Eastern Europe is being pulled back into the gravity of petty nationalism, Western Europe is caught in a different but equally corrosive current: a radical, flattening universalism that seeks to erase all distinctions, all boundaries, all rootedness.
In the West, the dominant worldview today revolves around the idea that empathy must be expanded endlessly – until every human being on the planet is equally embraced. At first glance, this impulse may seem noble, but beneath its surface lies a spiritual void, because when empathy is expanded to include everyone, it risks meaning nothing. When everyone belongs, no-one truly belongs.
The total empathy that an individual human can manifest is a fixed amount. When it is indiscriminately distributed across all of humanity, its power is diluted – i.e. the net empathy each human receives becomes negligible. The math is simple: if empathy is finite, and you divide it among a lot of people, each receives next to nothing. This is essentially what Western liberal universalism demands: the dispersal of attention, emotion, and allegiance under the banners of "tolerance," "diversity," and "multiculturalism." But by trying to love everyone equally, one risks loving no-one meaningfully. By trying to maximize the breadth, he sacrifices the depth of feeling. The result is a thinning out of identity, a kind of emotional entropy.
On the opposite end of the spectrum lies petty nationalism. Unlike liberal universalism, it narrows empathy rather than disperses it – focusing all care and concern on a narrowly defined in-group. It deepens feeling at the expense of reach. Following the same math, if you divide the finite amount of empathy among fewer people, each receives more. But those left outside the circle receive nothing. And when the circle is drawn too tightly, it breeds hostility. It fosters the hatred of one’s closest neighbor, even when that neighbor shares the same roots, the same fate, the same historical memory and the same enemies.
This is the true danger: that in narrowing their sense of solidarity, some Eastern European nations are turning their animosity not toward an existential enemy that once enslaved them – but toward each other.
They don’t drift toward Russia because they admire it. They drift because they lack the emotional range to maintain unity with their neighbors. And Russia, parasitic as ever, knows exactly how to exploit this. It feeds on these resentments like a vulture circling a wounded animal, encouraging division, inflaming old grudges, and keeping the region fragmented.
Petty nationalism is not new. It is one of Europe’s oldest afflictions. Long before the current wave of liberal universalism, Europe was ravaged by its own tribalism. The continent tore itself apart in endless fratricidal wars. The First and Second World Wars were the culmination of this tendency to elevate the narrow petty identity above any broader sense of shared destiny.
Today, both extremes – petty nationalism and limitless universalism – are failing Europe. The former forgets the common good in favor of parochial pride. The latter forgets identity altogether in pursuit of an abstract sameness. Both lead to vulnerability. Both make Europeans easy prey for a power like Russia, which knows what it is, knows what it wants, and will stop at nothing to get it.
Thus, Europe today is caught between two dead ends. In the West, an open-border limitless universalism that dissolves identity into abstraction. In the East, a petty nationalism that clings to old wounds and sees allies as adversaries. Each in its own way undermines the continent’s cohesion. Each drains the instinct for self-preservation. And both leave Europe exposed at the very moment it faces an existential threat.
If Europe is to survive and rise to new heights it must transcend both. Universalism flattens our sense of who we are – it deprives us of depth; petty nationalism narrows the identity to the point of suffocation – it deprives us of breadth. One leaves us too detached to defend ourselves. The other too divided to stand together. In this vacuum, there can be no real unity, no common front, and no common sense of destiny.
What is needed is a new synthesis – civilizational nationalism.
Civilizational nationalism is the true universalism that carries both meaningful depth and enough breadth. It balances depth of feeling with breadth of feeling. It bridges the chasm between abstract cosmopolitanism and parochial tribalism. It carries the emotional depth of real belonging while expanding its scope to include the full European family. It is rooted in common ancestry, shared historical memory, and the recognition of common destiny.
This kind of nationalism does not mean retreating behind national borders, nor does it mean dissolving them into global sameness. It means forging a broader identity that gives meaning to the word "Europe." It means recognizing that Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, French, English, and others are not simply neighbors by geography – but kin with shared ancestry and historical memory. That there is no need for Europeans to choose between their individual nations and the whole civilization.
Only such a framework can provide the spiritual architecture strong enough to resist both Russia’s aggression and the internal rot of fragmentation. Only this can counter the appeal of petty nationalist movements that gravitate toward Moscow – not really out of love for Russia, but out of despair and resentment. What drives them into Russia’s arms is a deep sense of dispossession: the belief that their leaders care more for some distant ideals and civilizational aliens than for their own people.
If Europe’s institutions once again anchored themselves in the will and memory of their peoples – if they honored those who built and preserved this civilization – much of that resentment would evaporate. Those who now look to Russia in protest would turn back toward Europe, if Europe gave them something to belong to. A Europe that draws strength from its common ancestry and historical memory – in other words, Europe that espouses civilizational nationalism – that Europe would no longer be vulnerable to Russian manipulation. It would become something stronger than the sum of its parts.
And that Europe would be meaningful. It would be inspiring. It would possess the identity expansive enough to unite hundreds of millions of people, yet intimate enough to be deeply felt by every single European. That Europe would be unstoppable.
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