Poland ranks first (in terms of GDP) among all countries that have pledged to help Ukraine. Polish assistance was the first to reach the Ukrainian front in significant quantities. We are the ones who have donated the most heavy weapons. Poland is also one of the countries that have taken in the most refugees in absolute terms.
Poland was the first to respond to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, helping our neighbour to put up a successful fight against the aggressor. In the first, decisive months of the war, we became the undisputed leader in supporting Ukraine with weapons. Our stance strengthened Ukraine militarily, which influenced the subsequent phases of this conflict. All the evidence suggests that the situation in Ukraine would be different today without Polish assistance to our neighbour.
If we add up the amount of money spent on supporting Ukraine and helping Ukrainian refugees as a percentage of gross domestic product, Poland ranks first among all the countries that have helped our neighbour.
Poland has earmarked 4.91% of its GDP for this assistance, with 0.71% of GDP allocated to support Ukraine and 4.2% of GDP dedicated to the cost of assisting Ukrainian refugees.
🔷 Poland was the first to begin supplying Ukraine with heavy weaponry on a large scale. Poland also initiated the ‘tank coalition’ and was one of the first countries to provide Ukraine with combat aircraft. Furthermore, Poland was the first to submit a command to an EU training mission.
In total, Poland has provided Ukraine with military aid worth €3.23 billion or more than PLN 14 billion. However, comparison of our involvement with other countries is hindered by the lack of official data (for security reasons) and the fact that the transfer of some military equipment to Ukraine by other countries is still in the realm of declarations.
🔷🔷 Military support 🔷🔷
The first significant quantities of armaments that arrived at the front line were those donated by Poland to Ukraine. We have supplied the largest amount of heavy equipment of all the allies, comprising approximately one thousand pieces in total (including tanks, armoured personnel carriers, etc.).
🔷 Of the almost 800 tanks that Ukraine received, more than 350 were made available by Poland. This figure exceeds the total amount transferred by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Spain.
Among the resources that went to Ukraine: the Polish army provided Ukraine with 14 modern Leopard 2A4 tanks and 60 older models of PT–91 tanks, as well as 280 T72M, T72M1, and T72M1R tanks.
Poland delivered the first batch of T–72 tanks to Ukraine already in the first half of 2022. In an interview with the German daily newspaper Bild, the Polish President pointed out: – “A total of 240 tanks have been dispatched from us to Ukraine, all of which are capable of being operated by the Ukrainian army. These tanks are post–Soviet models that remain at the disposal of our own military forces.”
In the following months, further shipments of Polish equipment were received in Ukraine. Less than a year after the Russian invasion, Poland announced another important step that marked the beginning of a new chapter in assistance to our neighbour.
– ‘In order to bolster defence against Russian aggression, we will donate a company of modern Leopard tanks to Ukraine,’ Andrzej Duda declared during his visit to Lviv, encouraging other countries to join the ‘tank coalition’. – ‘I hope that along with other Leopard companies and other tanks to be donated by other countries, Ukraine’s defence will be stepped out soon by such assistance measures. In any case, a decision has already been made in Poland on this matter,” he noted.
According to the ongoing records of the Centre for Eastern Studies, we also gave more than 250 BWP–1 infantry fighting vehicles, 100 KTO Rosomak armoured personnel carriers, nine BRDM 2 reconnaissance vehicles, more than a hundred self–propelled guns, more than 30 BM–21 Grad rocket launchers.
🔷 A total of 14 of our MiG–29s and 12 Mi–24 helicopters have been given to the Ukrainian Air Force to boost its strength (only the United States has donated more).
The first fighter jets arrived in Ukraine in mid–March 2023, thus opening another chapter of Western aid to Ukraine.
– Literally in the next few days, we will hand over four aircraft to Ukraine in full combat readiness. The remaining aircraft are currently being serviced and prepared and will be delivered gradually, Andrzej Duda announced during a joint conference with Czech President Petr Pavel.
The Ukrainian army already had such equipment in operation, so Ukrainian pilots were able to use these machines immediately, without additional training.
Dozens of Polish drones for close reconnaissance, hundreds of kamikaze drones and anti–aircraft and anti–missile kits have also been delivered to Ukraine.
We have also donated more than 100 million rounds of ammunition of various types and calibres.
🔷 In view of an acute shortage of ammunition on the front line in the successive months of the war, the President of the Republic of Poland declared his accession to the Czech ‘ammunition initiative’. We pledged €100 million in support for this initiative.
Poland has also offered training and logistical support for the transfer of F16 aircraft. Polish maintenance and defence facilities service Leopard, T–72 and Pt–91 tanks, as well as Krab gun howitzers used by Ukraine at the front.
20,000 Starlink units were also delivered to Ukraine (and we are funding their maintenance) to support internet connectivity. The mobile routers, which enable the use of the internet, were essential especially during the first phase of the war, when the Russians disrupted the communications of the Ukrainian military, limiting their ability to put up defence.
🔷 Poland organised or co–organised more than half a thousand training courses for the Ukrainian armed forces.
To date, we have trained around 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers, 14,500 of them through the EUMAM mission.
We train pilots, tankers, artillerymen, logisticians and technicians at the command level and in entire subdivisions.
On the basis of an intergovernmental agreement, Poland has also offered to train Ukrainian volunteers at Polish training grounds. For reasons on the Ukrainian side, such training has not yet started.
🔷 In January 2025, the NATO–Ukraine Analysis, Training and Education Centre(JATEC) will open in Bydgoszcz.
This will be the first official NATO–Ukraine body to share battlefield experience. It will be headed by a Pole, General Wojciech Ozga.
JATEC is the implementation of the initiative put forward by the President of the Republic of Poland at the Madrid NATO Summit as one of the flagship projects in support of Ukraine.
– Using the experience of the war in Ukraine, we will deepen our knowledge of war strategies and new elements of the battlefield. And on the other hand – we will work to bring the Ukrainian armed forces closer to NATO standards in order to facilitate Ukraine’s integration into the Alliance in the future,” said Andrzej Duda during a recent visit to Bydgoszcz.
🔷🔷 Humanitarian support 🔷🔷
The exodus from Ukrainian territories in the wake of war operations was the largest in scale population movement in Europe since the Second World War. As a result, more than 3.5 million Ukrainians are internally displaced and nearly 6.5 million are outside the country.
Poland tops the list of countries that have taken in the most refugees in absolute terms.
According to UNHCR data, there are currently nearly 980,000 Ukrainian refugees in our country. As calculated by Eurostat, we have received the largest number of them in relation to our population, along with the Baltic countries and our southern neighbours.
🔷 Just one month after the outbreak of war, the Polish parliament adopted the Law on Assistance to Ukrainian Citizens in Connection with the Armed Conflict on the Territory of Ukraine, which regularised their residence and enabled them to be assigned a PESEL number. This entitled refugees to benefit from a number of public services, receive family and child–rearing benefits, receive financial assistance and allowed access to free medical and psychological care.
Reception points were set up in all voivodeships, where assistance was offered to persons upon crossing the border. a place to rest, basic medical care and information on the rules of stay in Poland, available forms of assistance and the rules for legalising stay in Poland. There are still 14 such centres in operation. By 31 July 2024, they had served a total of more than 1.5 million people.
Temporary collective accommodation facilities were also organised, where meals were provided – 538,664 Ukrainian citizens have so far benefited from this measure. Information and assistance centres continue to operate.
Access to transport services within Poland has been facilitated. Solutions have also been introduced to allow humanitarian vehicles or convoys to travel free of charge on toll roads.
The Polish government co–financed accommodation and food for Ukrainian refugees – by 30 June 2024, more than two million Ukrainian citizens had benefited from this arrangement.
Data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs shows that the cost of maintaining war refugees from Ukraine under temporary protection in 2022 was PLN 4.9 billion, the highest among OECD member states. In 2023, this sum stood at PLN 2.5 billion.
🔷 In parallel to state support, a large majority of the Polish population involved themselves in helping refugees from Ukraine. According to a survey by the Polish Economic Institute, PIE, this was 77 per cent of Poles.
This assistance has taken various forms – from financial and material support, through various types of voluntary activities, to providing their own homes and flats to those in need. Around 7 per cent of Poles have opened their own homes to refugees.
According to PIE Institute, in the first months after the outbreak of war, Poles allocated a total of around PLN 10 billion from their own pockets to help refugees.
Poland has offered Ukrainian refugees a home, but also jobs. Poland has the highest rate of refugee employment among OECD countries – as high as 65 per cent.
The proportion of working refugees remains above 40 per cent in several other European countries: the United Kingdom, Sweden, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. On the other hand, Germany, Switzerland and Italy have the lowest proportions of economically active refugees.
🔷 Medical treatment of soldiers and civilians, training of medics
Immediately after the outbreak of war, Poland launched dozens of initiatives to support those most in need. Among other things, transports of children with serious diseases in need of immediate medical assistance were organised.
One such convoy, voluntarily organised in cooperation with the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, transported a group of children in need of immediate specialised care to Warsaw from a children’s hospital in Lviv in the first days of March 2022. The patients in gravest condition were referred to three hospice facilities: in Łódź, Kraków and Toruń.
Within months of the start of the war in Ukraine, Poland began receiving regular transports of wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Previously, this had not been possible due to internal Ukrainian regulations on the treatment of military personnel. The treatment and transport from Ukraine of those injured as a result of the hostilities was made possible by an amendment to the Nursing and Midwifery Act and certain other laws signed by the President of Poland. The assistance was extended to Ukrainian citizens and non–citizens fighting on the Ukrainian side during the war.
The patients, who were mainly injured by gunshot wounds and mine explosions, needed mainly surgical and orthopaedic assistance. In total, almost 300 wounded Ukrainian soldiers and victims of the war in Ukraine arrived in Poland.
In parallel, Polish hospitals offered a full range of healthcare to civilians.
From February 2022 to the end of March 2024, publicly funded healthcare services benefited Ukrainian patients as follows:
- over 1 million in primary care facilities;
- 446,000 in outpatient specialist care;
- 388,000 under inpatient treatment;
- 17 000 were provided with psychiatric care (inpatient and outpatient).
A total of 1.2 million refugees benefited from publicly funded healthcare services. The total cost of this treatment amounted to PLN 3.3 billion.
Treatment was provided, among others, by highly specialised institutions, such as the Warsaw Institute “The Children’s Memorial Health Institute”. In the first six months of the full–scale war alone, it admitted nearly 450 children, and more than 800 received treatment in outpatient clinics and in the casualty department.
Experience is also being shared by hospital managers – recently, with the support of the First Lady, Ukrainian specialists managing medical facilities in Ivano–Frankivsk and Rivne were trained at the Voivodeship Specialist Hospital in Biała Podlaska.
🔷 Medical hub
By June 2024, a total of around 3,000 patients from Ukraine were transported through the MEDEVAC Hub Jasionka near Rzeszów for further treatment in 18 countries.
Thanks to Agata Kornhauser–Duda’s international contacts, among others, some of the young patients have been transferred to overseas facilities for specialised care.
🔷 Through Polish institutions, most notably the Governmental Agency for Strategic Reserves RARS, which runs the humanitarian aid hub for Ukraine, 11,000 tonnes of food products worth PLN 205 million and medicines worth PLN 60 million were delivered to our neighbour during the first two years of the war.
In addition, 70,000 cubic metres of fuel and 4,000 emergency housing containers were delivered to Ukraine during that period.
Goods from all over the world worth more than PLN 1.5 billion, 75,000 pallets, more than 55,000 tonnes of goods passed through the reloading hub. The aid was transported by 9,000 trucks, several hundred trains carried more than 10,000 wagons and containers. The agency handled donations to Ukraine from 58 countries.
RARS personnel have built 14 container towns for Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, including four in Lviv. The dozens of towns built so far can accommodate more than 10,000 homeless people. They will be used by refugees until they find new permanent accommodation.
🔷 Ukraine’s energy security
Russia has destroyed 80–90 per cent of Ukraine’s heating plant generation and 30–50 per cent of its hydroelectric power plants in recent months, according to estimates from the European Commission. This equates to a total of 9.2 GW of installed capacity, representing 45–60 per cent of the 18–20 GW that was available before the Russian attacks. Of this, 7.8 GW was nuclear. It is clear that the operating infrastructure is the target of ongoing Russian attacks.
Based on the latest projections, Ukraine’s power system is expected to have the capacity to provide heating and electricity to residential customers for just a few hours a day during the winter months. At present, only facilities of a strategic nature, such as hospitals, are connected to the power grid on a permanent basis.
Therefore, a special logistics hub – the ‘rescEU energy hub’ – was launched in Poland in 2023. Through it, several thousand generators/transformers and spare parts were transferred to Ukraine.
During one of the recent relief operations, by decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs , 207 generators were made available to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. Further 33 generators were handed over to the Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
Furthermore, Poland made a notable contribution of humanitarian and energy aid to Ukraine during the previous electricity crisis in 2022–2023. More specifically: Enea Operator Sp. z o.o. made a donation of components for the reconstruction of energy infrastructure worth PLN 1.245 million, while GAZ–SYSTEM made a contribution of PLN 200.7 thousand. Furthermore, Energa Operator made a donation of PLN 1.940 million, and PSE made a significant donation of equipment, including more than 200 tonnes of materials worth over PLN 11 million.
This year, the following organisations have pledged their assistance to the Ukrainian side: Gaz System, Tauron, ENERGA S.A., ENEA S.A., PERN, PSE S.A. and Orlen S.A.
🔷 Logistics hub
Poland is a key player in the delivery of aid to Ukraine, largely due to our geographical location. Our country’s logistics hub is responsible for the majority of foreign supplies to Ukraine, including both humanitarian and military aid.
In the first half of 2022 alone, more than 80 per cent of aid sent by the European Union, worth around €800 million, passed through the UCPM logistics hub. The total value of Polish in–kind aid sent by Poland during this period adds up to around €415 million.
🔷 Development aid
Poland is also supporting Ukraine in rebuilding and strengthening the resilience of Ukrainian institutions. Activities are being carried out to build the capacity of public administration and professionalise civil servants, including in the context of preparing for EU membership. Poland also co–finances the activities of the OCED office in Kyiv.
At the same time, activities are being undertaken to assist Ukrainian institutions to maintain and perform their functions under wartime conditions. The Ministry of the Interior and its subordinate units are providing support to Ukrainian emergency services, both state and voluntary. Funding is also being provided to Ukrainian local authorities to improve the quality of and access to social services.
We are also working with the Ukrainian administration to meet the challenges of reconstruction. This includes rebuilding medical and educational infrastructure and public buildings destroyed by the war. Support to Ukraine also includes the education and training system, given the need to provide a skilled workforce for the country’s reconstruction.
🔷🔷 Political support 🔷🔷
The support Poland’s top officials gave to our neighbours in the face of Russian aggression has resulted in such a broad flow of aid to embattled Ukraine.
Solidarity with the Ukrainian people was poignantly illustrated during the visit to Kyiv of the President of the Republic of Poland and the President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, on the eve of the Russian attack.
Already at that time, Andrzej Duda announced that Ukraine deserved to be granted the status of candidate country for accession to the European Union. In many statements, he also called for Ukraine’s accession to NATO. According to the Polish President, this takes time, but „the start of the accession process would be of great psychological importance for Ukrainian society and would boost the morale of Ukraine’s defenders”.
In a series of talks with the leaders of our region’s countries and other European Union states, during bilateral meetings and in broader formats, Andrzej Duda has urged the fastest and possible broadest support for our neighbour with, among other things, including military equipment, but also a decision on Ukraine’s participation in Western European structures and institutions.
Referring to the ambivalent attitude of some countries, in dozens of interviews abroad the Polish leader convinces Western observers that „dialogue with Russia makes no sense at all. On the one hand, they want to show a civilised face, on the other, they murder in the most savage and despicable way”.
When Andrzej Duda appeared before Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada with his historic address a month later during another visit to Kyiv, he was greeted by the Polish anthem and applause from MPs. – The free world has the face of Ukraine, he assured the Ukrainian parliamentarians at the time.
This message – despite the dynamic international situation – is still relevant.
[The publication contains selected information on Poland’s support for Ukraine based on data from, inter alia, the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, the Centre for Eastern Studies, OECD, UNHCR, Eurostat, the Polish Economic Institute, line Ministries – material continuously updated].
Source: gov.pl
Photo: Wojtek Jargiło
