for clarity. I'm USA and Polish citizen. I live in Poland (Warsaw) for almost 20 years now.
Ruling party
PiS has been in power for 8 years. They took complete power thanks to corruption scandal which seems to lead to some kremlin money/sources. Basically some recordings surfaced that suggested corruption in politics (wow !!!) which was enough to swing the vote. Guy who made recordings has been in business of importing coal from russia, with some sweetheart deals and shady history. Go figure.
As for our version of cleaning the swamp- nobody was convicted of anything and no proof of widespread corruption was offered. Brave crimefighters in charge are currently embroiled in a scandal where they sold visa's to poland ( and EU ) for 5k$ a pop to hundred thousands of people in africa and asia. Some of them ended up on Mexican border of all places.
In essence, our president is a puppet of the party with no opinion of his own. He's pretty dumb at that. Prime minister is an opportunist who tends to say stupid toejam when riled up.
Recently their standings in upcoming election polls are falling so they are taking hard turn right. PiS has always been a right wing party (with very left wing populist economic views) and always took care that nothing grows to the right of them. As it stands there is a new party - Konfederacja - (Confederation) which polls at 9-10% in some cases and can be easily grouped with Kremin sponsored parties all over the europe. It's a gathering of neo-nazis, nationalists, conspiracy theorists and free market extremists promising to "flip the table" which tends to resonate with some people. They are taking some of the PiS electorate with them, so PiS has to start being more nationalistic, more protective of "national interests" and so on. This is where "we have to take care of ourselves before we help", "we already helped too much" statements come from. They are aimed at local electorate, some of which views help to Ukraine with "why them before us" approach. Many of the same people are pro-russia or anti-ukraine, but keeping low as those things are currently not well received.
Population
People in Poland as some of the least sympathetic to Russia you'll find on the planet. We can easily compete with Finns. Poland has a long history of animosity with Russia and most "first hand" experience with Rusky-mir. If any politician came out as "pro-russia" here, they would be pretty screwed. This is why they always wrap in nationalistic, pro-slavic bs instead.
If you hear anyone talking about Poland wanting some of the Ukraine or Belorus territories "back", i can assure you that such ideas never surfaced in local politics, i never heard of anyone advocating for this in any conversation. Such claims are nothing more then Kremlin propaganda aimed at creating false symmetry. People in Poland are looking west, not east. Last 30 years since joining west has been good to us, people can live a good life and only nutcases would advocate for some kin of slavic solidarity under a Russian flag. There are no ambitions for recreating historical greatness (Rzeczpospolita od morza do morza - Poland from sea to sea) those things are just too far in the past.
We are proud of what we did for Ukrainians when war started. Government was slow, didn't do much. What you saw on the news in 99% was just private people giving their roof, money or whatever. Personally i had a 5 people family in my house for 6 months. It was great, they even visited couple weeks ago cause we missed them
There are still lots of Ukrainians living in Poland. They became a norm. While incidents might happen, in general it is normal and expected to hear Ukrainian language just about anywhere. They are not persecuted, kids go to school. There are still people helping. Poland has been under Russian occupation for great many years, while only some of us remember communist brotherhood at the end of the bayonet, most heard from their parents/grandparent etc. We'll be helping as much as we can.
Trade - peasant parties has quite an influence. As it is in states, seats in both houses tends to go with regions where in some less populated ones, much smaller group of people can swing the vote more. This leads to entire hoopla with Ukrainian produce. While price of grain went down ( which should be a good thing ) it causes some uproar in those areas and government had to "act". Mostly in self interest (reelection) but they still did. If you look at similar cases in other counties (Slovakia) in same case after initial sabre rattling, they quickly came to "agreement". Governments could show that they did something, but the right thing still happen.
Instability you might observe in news when it comes to Poland is down to incompetent leadership of our government. PiS is a dictator party - there is a one old man (Kaczyński) who plays conservative (always single, likely closet gay) but is mostly interested in ruling as long as possible. They undermined a constitutional process, staffed the courts with lackeys. For example - lady leading our supreme court was sanctioned from county court for incompetence. Many of our ministers are people with IQ barely exceeding their shoesize - but they are loyal to the dictator.
Pay close attention to the news in next 3 weeks in Poland. We have elections on 15th and lot of things hangs in balance. Regardless of the result, though, i think we will continue to support Ukraine. It is also in our own self-interest.
Sorry for the incoherent rant
Hope some of it makes sense. If you have any questions - feel free to ask.
