Polish authorities have launched an investigation into the physical and verbal assault of a 15-year-old Ukrainian boy who was allegedly attacked for speaking his native language on a city bus in P\u0142ock. <\/p>\n
According to the victim\u2019s statements to Polish broadcaster TVP Warszawa, the incident occurred on bus route No. 3 when an unidentified adult passenger approached the teenager and his companion, demanding that they speak Polish, News.Az<\/a> reports, citing the Kyiv Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n The man allegedly struck the 15-year-old before forcibly pushing both youths off the bus when the doors opened at a stop.<\/p>\n District prosecutor Marcin Policevich said investigators have begun the necessary procedural steps and are working to identify the suspect<\/a>. Police have already questioned a witness to the incident and the boy\u2019s legal guardian. A decision on charges will be made once the suspect has been identified.<\/p>\n The teenager\u2019s mother, Natalia Melnyk, said the assault has left her family deeply concerned about their safety, adding that she now feels anxious about speaking Ukrainian in public in the city.<\/p>\n The incident comes amid a reported rise in hostility toward Ukrainian nationals living in Poland.<\/p>\n According to data analyzed by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Ukrainian citizens submitted 267 reports of such incidents in 2024 and 275 in 2025. If the current trend continues, the number of reports could reach around 360 by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n Polish law enforcement officials emphasized that these figures reflect complaints filed by alleged victims and do not necessarily represent crimes confirmed through investigations.<\/p>\n The issue recently drew nationwide attention following a separate incident in the southern city of Bielsko-Bia\u0142a, where a 54-year-old man verbally abused two 11-year-old Ukrainian girls on a bus. The suspect was later detained, charged with publicly insulting the girls on the basis of their nationality, and dismissed from his job as a bus driver.<\/p>\n The Union of Ukrainians in Poland has said that hostility toward Ukrainians often intensifies during periods of political tension and around sensitive historical anniversaries.<\/p>\n Relations between Poland and Ukraine have also deteriorated after Kyiv named an elite military unit after a World War II-era Ukrainian resistance movement that Poland links to the deaths of approximately 100,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia and eastern Galicia.<\/p>\n The diplomatic dispute prompted Polish President Karol Nawrocki to revoke the country’s highest state honor previously awarded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n At the same time, researchers have identified a sharp increase in anti-Ukrainian content circulating online, warning that political tensions are being exploited by Russian information operations aimed at undermining relations between Poland and Ukraine.<\/p>\n Research cited by Rzeczpospolita found that 94,000 anti-Ukrainian posts were published between April and July 2025 during Poland\u2019s presidential election campaign, generating more than 32 million views.<\/p>\n Sociologists believe the true scale of harassment against Ukrainians may be significantly higher than official statistics suggest, as many victims remain reluctant to report incidents to law enforcement.<\/p>\n