Ukraine really sounds like your Mexico. Poor. Always in need of handouts. Relies on you for all their military equipment. Your government retardedly gives in at a moments notice. And you're force fed propaganda how the Mex- I mean Ukrainians are so great, even though they hate you and only see you as a pay check. Is this accurate?
Nah I don't think so. For one, this narration is as old as the invasion, before that criticizing and laughing at Ukrainians was okay, and the government wasn't going full retard on gibs for them. In fact there weren't any gibs before the invasion.
The propaganda happened overnight on February 24th 2022. Before that you had two stations, state owned TVP doing PiS' propaganda, and US corporate owned TVN, doing PO propaganda, constantly doing opposing narrations in a very primitive way. Then the invasion happens and all media stations give you the exact same message about the war.
Suddenly the PiS/PO conflict is gone, all the media unites to parrot the narrative of Western media. Any suggestions that Zelensky bad or Ukrainians bad because Bandera, Wołyń, Azov and so on get screeched out for being pro-Russian propaganda, you cannot criticize the sacred cow, the government gives out gibs after gibs to Ukraine, and again, anyone opposing those, Russian agent, Russian footwrap (onuca), because that's a trendy insult in Polish, you cannot criticize them, it was so mind numbingly stupid.
Then as the war went on, shit like Przewodów happened. A rocket hit a Polish village, killed two Polish citizens. Zelensky instantly jumped out to say it was a Russian rocket, Russia attacked Poland, yapping like a mad dog until Sleepy Joe pulled back his leash when it turned out it was a Ukrainian rocket. Then no apologies, it was forgotten, but not by everyone, and it was a wake-up call for many that Zelensky is not the hero he was made out to be.
However to this day there's a lot of misinformation on what Ukraine actually did wrong, is it Russian misinformation and so on, because it's war, obviously the media war still rages on, and I expect the real war to start once this conflict is over, there is no more incentive to prop up the US propaganda about Ukraine, and the real impact of the government's decisions during the war will start to set in for real once the narration is no longer artificially kept up.
Very importantly, the topic of war in Ukraine in Poland is reported on daily by every mainstream media outlet. They constantly keep this discussion up and keep riling people up about it, to the point where you can't even escape it online. On Polish sites you'll have people praising Ukraine or having an kneejerk reaction to anything Russian related even though before it all those kneejerk reactions weren't happening everywhere at the slightest mention of Russia. Polish YouTubers that didn't do politics suddenly do inserts about Ukraine good Russia bad, and they're obviously influenced by the mainstream narrative because before that date they never talked about it. The YT algo is also completely poisoned to spoon feed you this negative information daily with no way to filter it out besides cutting yourself away from the algo.
And also not every Ukrainian that ran away to Poland is the type of shithead that should be deported, but at the same time there's enough of those shitheads, or even worse, shitheads that came here, grabbed the gibs, then fucked off to Germany and still taking our gibs because our government is too incompetent to keep this shit in check, that there's bound to be some serious tensions brewing here in the future. But right now suggesting those will get you branded online as a Russian propagandist that purposefully spreads anti-Ukrainian propaganda, even though I doubt Russia has to do anything for this to happen.
It's 4AM and I'm maniacally politisperging, so here's an example of just how stupid the initial kneejerk reaction was in Poland.
These are known here as "pierogi ruskie". They're dumplings with potatoes and cheese. The name "ruskie" is derivative from "Ruś", as they originate from the Red Ruthenia, a historical land encompassing parts of current day Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.
Now, in Polish, the word "ruski" is also used as a pejorative term towards Russians. To them, "русский" is how they call themselves, but Poles turned it into an insult. And when the war happened, the kneejerk reaction was that "pierogi ruskie" implied they originated from Russia, even though they never seen those there, so a lot of restaurants were quickly rebranding them as "pierogi ukraińskie", or "Ukrainian dumplings".
Completely retarded as the original name was fine and accurate, but this is the caliber of stupidity you'd expect from an average Pole when a big thing happens. It's a chance to prove that we're totally not a meaningless useless post-Soviet country, and by being so helpful everyone else will surely help us out and not fuck us over like during WW2. Because apparently having the best economy and society of any post-Eastern Bloc country is not big enough of an accomplishment to completely abandon those national insecurities.
