The spectacular rise of the far-right in Poland’s presidential elections last week is a result of voters’ antipathy towards the established political order and a growing ‘Ukraine fatigue’, marking a significant ideological shift for a country known for its antagonism towards Russia.

The far-right surge in Poland comes amid similar trends across the world, with nationalist and populist leaders now in power from the US to India and beyond.

Rafal Trzaskowski, the eastern European country’s pro-EU and centrist candidate, came first with nearly a third of the total vote, while conservative historian Karol Nawrocki followed with barely two points less.

Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun, two far-right candidates, came third and fourth, respectively, and won more than twenty percent of the popular vote.

“Such scores for far-right candidates hint at a growing dissatisfaction with the current ruling coalition of centrist and leftist parties, as well as with the former ruling conservative party, PiS,” says Denys Kolesnyk, a French consultant and eastern Europe specialist and the president of MENA Research Center, a Vienna-based think-tank. 

Centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the former president of the powerful European Council, leads Poland’s fragile coalition but faces increasing attacks from far-right groups. 

Tusk is also facing increasing criticism from the conservative and Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party, part of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a rightwing EU platform with many nationalist parties. 

Poland will, however, have to wait till early June when Trzaskowski, a moderate conservative, and PiS candidate Nawrocki face off in a tough run-off to decide the next president.

Experts say that the conservative candidate is better placed, with the leftists losing all influence on the election outcome. 

“Karol Nawrocki has a good chance of winning the presidential race because he would most likely benefit from some far-right votes, even though neither he nor his party is far-right,” Kolesnyk tells TRT World. 

Fed up with the establishment

Experts point out that the far-right's ascendancy in Europe has a similar political trajectory to other populist movements, like Trump’s MAGA campaign, and has been triggered by a similar dissatisfaction with mainstream parties aligned with older political establishments. 

“The first-round presidential tally is unprecedented: Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun together pulled just over one-fifth of all ballots, the highest for the far-right share since 1989,” says Linas Kojala of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, a Baltic state which formed a commonwealth with Poland between the 16th and 18th centuries.  

Mentzen is an anti-establishment candidate who identified the EU as a “totalitarian” state and once advocated a possible exit from the union. Braun, a firebrand with both xenophobic and anti-Semitic views, left Mentzen’s far-right party after accusing it of not being adequately nationalist. 

“Their electorate is disproportionately young, male and urban, mobilised more through social-media channels than through party structures that have long alternated power between [Tusk’s centrist] Civic Platform and Law & Justice,” Kojala tells TRT World. 

But Kojala also views the first round result as more of a protest vote against the country’s two-party monopoly by young Poles who felt left behind, rather than “sudden embrace of extremism”. 

Kolesnyk, though, adds that the real impact of the far-right on political life in Poland would remain “marginal”, which is a far cry from the “reality in numerous western European states”. 

But west Europe’s trend might be becoming a “reality” in the east too, if recent political shifts are anything to go by.

While far-right groups have made big gains in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal, among other west European nations, they have also shown their strength across the east in recent years. 

Last week in Romania, far-right leader George Simion lost the country’s presidential runoff but gained more than 46 percent of the total vote in an unprecedented election result.

Nawrocki’s PiS gave open support to Simion, who publicly argued against military aid to Ukraine. Both leaders also embraced during a recent rally in Poland ahead of the elections.

Hungary and Slovakia, the two EU states, have already had nationalist governments. 

Why is Polish far-right on the rise? 

According to Kolesnyk and Kojala, there are several factors behind the rise of the Polish far-right – from the failure of mainstream parties to an expanding trend of Euroscepticism across the EU, high inflation and finally “Ukraine fatigue”, a term used to denote diminishing public support for continuing military aid to Kiev and growing opposition to the presence of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. 

“Dissatisfaction with Donald Tusk's government, as well as grievances accumulated during the rule of the PiS party, have contributed to a situation where voters sought ‘alternative’ conservative candidates,” says Kolesnyk.

“Moreover, there is a general trend of Euroscepticism in the EU that is also visible in Poland, albeit to a lesser extent than in western Europe.” 

Kojala sees dissatisfaction with mainstream politics through the lens of a “generational distance”, saying that “voters without memories of communism regard the two established blocs as guardians of an ageing consensus”.

The presence of Ukrainian refugees “may have also sparked a leaning towards far-right ideologies among certain segments of the Polish population,” according to Kolesnyk. 

Poland has hosted more than 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of the Ukraine war in early 2022. 

Citing a recent survey which found national support for military aid to Kiev had slipped below 50 percent, Kojala says that Ukraine fatigue “creeping in”.

Far-right influencers with large social media followings have successfully managed to portray the EU’s migration policies and climate rules as “external impositions on Polish sovereignty”, potentially affecting voting patterns in the elections. 

In fact, fears of the EU’s federalist and integration policies overwhelming member-states’ sovereign rules have been a common theme in many European states – from France to Germany and, most recently, Romania. 

In addition to these political factors, various economic difficulties have also increased far-right groups’ appeal to the Polish population, according to Kojala. 

“The post-pandemic cost-of-living squeeze still bites: annual inflation was 4.9 percent in March and household rents continue to rise faster than wages.”

Connections to Russia

Poland has had a complicated history with Moscow, more than many eastern European states, from the time of Imperial Russia to the erstwhile Soviet Union. 

“Poland has had quite difficult relations characterised by wars with Muscovy and even occupation by imperial Russia, as well as de facto control by the USSR during the Cold War,” says Kolesnyk. 

“It is extremely difficult to spark any pro-Russian sentiment (among Poles), as has been the case, for instance, in France,” he adds. 

Interestingly, some Polish far-right activists show pro-Moscow “leanings through anti-Ukrainian and anti-EU rhetoric and actions that align with Russian narratives,” he adds. 

But Kojala believes that emerging far-right party leaderships in Poland are not pro-Russian. 

“The Polish far right is nationalist and Eurosceptic, but it is not pro-Russian—a crucial distinction in a country where security policy remains firmly Atlanticist,” he says. 

PiS’s presidential nationalist candidate Nawrocki backs military aid to Kiev and labels Russia the chief threat to regional security, says Kojala. “Any hint of Russian funding is toxic in Polish politics.” 

Even far-right Mentzen’s Confederation leadership publicly condemned the 2022 invasion, he adds.