‘Warsaw feels like a mini Soviet Union’: how Russian is gaining ground in Poland’s capital

A couple draped in Ukrainian flags walk across Castle Square in Warsaw. Photograph: Kasia Strek/The Observer

For Russian citizens, it is extremely difficult to get into Poland these days. Even those with visas for the Schengen zone can be turned away, and the national airline LOT regularly bars Russians from boarding its flights.

Many Poles have a long-standing wariness of Russia seeded by centuries of Russian imperial designs on Poland and the more recent experience of Moscow-backed communist rule, and the feelings have only been hardened by last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.