Nazi Germany Under Nazi ideology, Ukrainians—along with other Slavic peoples—were viewed as
Untermenschen (“subhumans”) and were thus subjected to extreme racial prejudice and exploitation. Nazi Germany did not recognize Ukrainians as a distinct nation or ethnic group worthy of sovereignty; instead, they were seen as a fragmented rural population to be subjugated, enslaved, or displaced in service of German expansionist aims.
Adolf Hitler and other key Nazi theorists considered Slavs racially inferior and politically incapable of self-rule. In
Mein Kampf, Hitler referred to Slavs as racially “inferior” and praised the Germanic right to conquer eastern lands. The 1942
Generalplan Ost, developed by Heinrich Himmler’s SS, laid out a vision of the mass expulsion and enslavement of tens of millions of Slavs, including Ukrainians. The plan envisioned that only a small fraction of the local population—10% or less—would be “Germanized,” while the rest would be forcibly removed or left to die under conditions of starvation and forced labor. Despite some initial Ukrainian support for Germany in 1941—particularly among nationalists who hoped for independence—the Nazi regime quickly cracked down on Ukrainian autonomy. The short-lived Ukrainian National Government, declared in Lviv by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), was dissolved by the Gestapo within days, and its leaders (including Yaroslav Stetsko and Stepan Bandera) were arrested. Reichskommissar
Erich Koch, appointed to administer occupied Ukraine, openly declared contempt for the local population: “We are a master race… I will squeeze the last drop out of the country. I did not come to spread bliss.” — Erich Koch, Reichskommissar of Ukraine Under Koch’s brutal rule, millions of Ukrainians were subjected to forced labor, starvation policies, and mass executions. An estimated 2.2 million Ukrainians were deported to work as Ostarbeiter (“Eastern workers”) in Germany under slave-like conditions. Nazi propaganda and administrative documents routinely dehumanized Ukrainians. A 1942 directive from the SS stated: “Ukrainians, like all Russians, are to be viewed as primitive people. They should be taught only simple labor, not politics, culture, or higher learning.” This systematic denial of education, cultural development, and self-determination exemplified the Nazis’ broader strategy: to erase Ukrainian identity and absorb the territory into a racially stratified German empire.
Ukraine On Sunday, 15 July 2012, the national television broadcasting station in Ukraine,
First National, in its news program "Weekly overview" () showed a video footage on the development of anti-Ukrainian sentiments within Ukraine. from
Vidsich: the Russian language is shown as a big man, telling a girl representing the Ukrainian language: "Little girl, move over! You're oppressing me!" in Russian. There is a
pun on
grammatical genders: the noun for "language" in Russian,
Jazyk, is masculine, while the Ukrainian word for "language",
Mova, is feminine. A propaganda article posted on the website of the
Kremenchuk department of the
Communist Party of Ukraine argues that the history that was published during the
Soviet regime was the true history, and that new historical facts being uncovered from the archives are false. The article also denies the existence of the
Ukrainian culture. Mykola Levchenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian from the
Party of Regions, and the deputy of the
Donetsk City Council, publicly stated that there should be only one language, Russian. He says that the Ukrainian language is impractical and should be avoided. Levchenko called Ukrainian the language of folklore and anecdotes. However, he says he will speak the literary Ukrainian language on principle, once Russian is adopted as the sole state language. Anna German, the spokesperson of the same party, highly criticized those statements. Mykhailo Bakharev, the vice-speaker of the
Crimean Autonomous Republic parliament (and chief editor of
Krymskaya Pravda), openly says that there is no Ukrainian language and that it is the language of the non-educated part of the population. He falsely claimed that it was invented by
Taras Shevchenko and others. He also believes that there is no Ukrainian nation, there is no future for the Ukrainian State, and that Ukrainization needs to be stopped.
Minister of Education of Ukraine The former Ukrainian Minister of Science and Education,
Dmytro Tabachnyk, sparked protests calling him anti-Ukrainian in some parts of Ukraine due to his statements about Western Ukrainians, his preference for the Russian language, and his
denial of the Holodomor. Tabachnyk's view of
Ukraine's history includes the thesis that western Ukrainians aren't really
Ukrainian. In an article for the
Russian newspaper
Izvestia, Tabachnyk wrote in 2009: "
Halychany (western Ukrainians) practically don't have anything in common with the people of
Great Ukraine, not in mentality, not in religion, not in linguistics, not in the political arena". "We have different enemies and different allies. Furthermore, our allies and even brothers are their enemies, and their "heroes" (
Stepan Bandera,
Roman Shukhevych) for us are killers, traitors and abettors of
Hitler's executioners."
Russia In response to Ukraine's 1991 declaration of independence, a prominent Russian poet,
Joseph Brodsky, wrote a deeply offensive poem
On the Independence of Ukraine. The poem was rediscovered and popularized by Russian state media in 2015 at the peak of the
war in Donbas. In a poll held by
Levada Center in June 2009 in Russia, 75% of Russian respondents respected Ukrainians as an ethnic group, but 55% were negative about Ukraine as the state. In May 2009, 96% of Ukrainians polled by
Kyiv International Sociology Institute were positive about Russians as an ethnic group, 93% respected the
Russian Federation, and 76% respected the Russian establishment. Some Russian media seem to try to discredit Ukraine. Anti-Ukrainian attitude persists among several Russian politicians, such as the former mayor of Moscow,
Yuri Luzhkov, and the former leader of the
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and former Deputy Speaker of the
Russian Parliament,
Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Russian state officials have made anti-Ukrainian statements, for example, Deputy Chair of the
Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said in April 2022 that "the very essence of Ukrainianness, fed by anti-Russian venom and lies about its identity, is one big sham. Ukrainian identity does not exist and never has." In 2006, in letters to
Vladimir Putin,
Viktor Yushchenko and
Vasily Duma, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of
Bashkortostan complained of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia, which they claim includes wide use of anti-Ukrainian
ethnic slurs in the mainstream Russian media, television and film. The Urals Association of Ukrainians also made a similar complaint in a letter they addressed to the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2000. According to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Bashkortostan, despite their significant presence in Russia, Ukrainians in that country have less access to Ukrainian-language schools and Ukrainian churches than do other ethnic groups. According to the president of the Ukrainian World Congress in 2001, persistent requests to register a
Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate or a
Ukrainian Catholic Church were hampered due to "particular discrimination" against them, while other Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish denominations fared much better. According to the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, by 2007, their denomination had only one church building in all of Russia. In 2008, Nikolai Smirnov released a documentary in which he claims that Ukraine is part of one whole Russia that was split away by various Western powers, particularly Poland. In November 2010, the
High Court of Russia cancelled registration of one of the biggest civic communities of the Ukrainian minority, the "
Federal nation-cultural autonomy of the Ukrainians in Russia" (FNCAUR). According to the author,
Mykhailo Ratushniy, Ukrainian activists continue to face discrimination and bigotry in much of Russia.
Hungary Poland on the 80th anniversary of the
Volhynia massacre in 2023 Under the
Second Polish Republic, Ukrainians were routinely discriminated against (along with other minorities). They were excluded from public jobs, Polish peasants were favoured when land from nobles' estates was divided during land reform, and the Polish government went so far as to raze Orthodox churches and to plan the expulsion of all Ukrainians from the
Kholm region. During the
Second World War, some Ukrainians initially supported Soviet and German occupation over continued Polish rule. Polish and Ukrainian militant organisations fought an underground war during and after the German occupation. Many Poles consider the destruction of Polish villages and killing of civilians during the conflict as
genocide of Poles, although Polish underground organisations also massacred Ukrainians (e.g. during the
Pawlokoma massacre, which occurred after the Volhynia massacre). In late 1995, Ukrainian organization "ZUwP" was demanded to be banned following the wave of anti-Ukrainian actions that have erupted during the festival of Ukrainian culture in Poland in the border town of
Przemyśl in 1995 where numerous threats against participants and numerous acts of vandalism took place. A rise in incidences of graffiti with anti-Ukrainian slogans, and the office of "Związek Ukraińców w Polsce" was set alight. In some cities anti-Ukrainian assaults, vandalism acts of an organised character have targeted centres of Ukrainian culture, schools, churches, memorials. Ukrainophobic and antisemitic authors (mainly interbellum
Endecja activists) published by Polish publishing house
Nortom include:
Roman Dmowski,
Janusz Dobrosz,
Jędrzej Giertych,
Jan Ludwik Popławski,
Maciej Giertych,
Stanisław Jastrzębski and
Edward Prus. In 2000, Nortom was forced to withdraw its 12 controversial titles from the Frankfurt Book Fair by the Polish Ministry of Culture representative Andrzej Nowakowski overlooking the Polish exposition. Nortom was accused of selling anti-German, anti-Ukrainian and antisemitic books, especially the following titles: "Być czy nie być" by Stanisław Bełza, "Polska i Niemcy" by Jędrzej Giertych and "I tak nie przemogą. Antykościół, antypolonizm, masoneria" by his son Maciej Giertych. As a result of the above request, the president of the Polish delegation Andrzej Chrzanowski from Polska Izba Książki decided to penalise Nortom by removing it from the 2000 book fair altogether. At that time, a stereotype of a Ukrainian as a cheap worker working illegally or as a person taking jobs from Poles in Poland emerged and increase in anti-immigrant sentiments by some political parties.
Situation after 24 February 2022 24 February 2022, armed forces of the Russian Federation
invaded Ukraine. As a result, by November 2023, over 17 million Ukrainian citizens had crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border. The government and Polish society decided to help Ukraine, but the situation caused by the
Ukrainian refugee crisis also resulted in a negative attitude towards Ukrainians among some Poles. Politicians
Grzegorz Braun and
Janusz Korwin-Mikke are often associated with anti-Ukrainian statements along with the
Confederation Liberty and Independence party. There were critical voices regarding aid for Ukraine and the alleged disarmament of the Polish Army from which newly purchased equipment was supposed to be sent to Ukraine. While some of these votes were right, some of them were mainly related to Russian propaganda. In 2022 the hashtag #StopUkrainizacjiPolski (Stop the ukrainization of Poland) was popularized. Anti-Ukrainian sentiments were not only related to economic topics and war, but also appeared with various incidents such as the murder on
Nowy Świat street in Warsaw in May 2022, for which a Ukrainian citizen was allegedly responsible, or the
missile explosion incident in Przewodów. A few smaller incidents also sparked anti-Ukrainian sentiments, but in some incidents some media incorrectly attributed Ukrainian nationality to the welders an example of which is the situation with 2 May 2023 when during the Polish Cup final in Warsaw a man who attacked police officers with an ax was wrongly presented as a Ukrainian citizen, even though he was a Polish citizen. Recently, the most negative feelings among Polish society have been aroused by military support for Ukraine, which is defined as the transfer of military equipment and some necessary logistic supplies for free, and the problem related to Ukrainian
grain, which caused farmers' protests on the Polish-Ukrainian border related to the massive flooding of the market with Ukrainian grain, lowering local prices.
Portugal Anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Portugal has grown since the arrival of
Ukrainian immigrants to Portuguese territory in the 1990s. Most Ukrainians in Portugal work in low-skill and low wages jobs, particularly on cleaning services, construction, manufacturing industries, transport services, hotels and restaurants. In March 2020, a Ukrainian citizen named Ihor Humenyuk was interrogated and tortured to death at
Lisbon airport while trying to immigrate to Portugal irregularly.
Canada Anti-Ukrainian discrimination was present in Canada from the arrival of
Ukrainians in Canada around 1891 until the late 20th century. In one sense this was part of a larger trend towards
nativism in Canada during the period. But Ukrainians were singled out for special discrimination because of their large numbers, visibility (due to dress, non-western European appearance, and language), and political activism. During the First World War,
around 8,000 Ukrainian Canadians were interned by the Canadian government as "enemy aliens" (because they came from the Austrian Empire). In the interwar period all Ukrainian cultural and political groups, no matter what their ideology was, were monitored by the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police and many of their leaders were deported. This attitude began to slowly change after the
Second World War, as Canadian immigration and cultural policies generally moved from being explicitly nativist to a more pluralistic one. Ukrainian nationalists were now seen as victims of communism, rather than dangerous subversives. Ukrainians began to hold high offices, and one, Senator
Paul Yuzyk was one of the earliest proponents of a policy of "
multiculturalism" which would end official discrimination and acknowledge the contribution of non-English, non-French Canadians. The
Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism of the 1960s, which had originally been formed only to deal with French-Canadian grievances, began the transition to multiculturalism in Canada because of Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau's desire to court Ukrainian votes in Western Canada. The commission also included a Ukrainian Canadian commissioner,
Jaroslav Rudnyckyj. Since the adoption of official multiculturalism under
Section Twenty-seven of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, Ukrainians in Canada have had legal protection against discrimination. Ukrainian Canadians have held high offices including Governor General (
Ray Hnatyshyn), Deputy Prime Minister (
Chrystia Freeland), Leader of the Opposition (
Rona Ambrose), and several premiers of provinces.
Latvia According to researcher Mārtiņš Kaprāns of
Center for European Policy Analysis, disinformation about Ukraine is dominant in Latvia's pro-Kremlin and
Russian language media, which has contributed to a negative image of Ukraine in its Russian-speaking population, while ethnic Latvians are largely supportive of Ukraine. He has named
Tatjana Ždanoka, and
vesti.lv as some of the sources of anti-Ukrainian statements in Latvia. On 20 May 2022, a man in Riga was ordered to pay 6034.55 euros as material and moral damages and sentenced to 200 hours of
community service for attacking a young man with a
flag of Ukraine on his shoulders. A police officer and an alleged spouse of the attacker present at the moment of the attack was fired from the
State Police for
negligence. On 24 June 2022, a criminal case was launched against two young people for burning a flag of Ukraine at
Vērmane Garden with the intention of posting the video on
TikTok to gain popularity and provoke Ukrainians.
North Korea On 23 June 2024,
Pak Jong-chon made a statement in which he compares Ukrainians to neo-Nazis. ==Slang references to Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture==