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2026-11-10 Europe
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'Nowhere to Run.' The Krakow Shooting Reveals One of Poland's Main Problems
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Ilya Maximov
[Regnum] Today, the perpetrator of the bloody massacre in central Krakow died in hospital. This tragic incident is already being called the first terrorist attack in Poland's history, and the reaction of Polish society has been quite telling.
On Saturday, November 7, in the area of Krakow's Main Square, a popular tourist destination, 24-year-old Pole Michal Oksinski drove an unlicensed car straight into the pedestrian zone of the historic center, taking passersby by surprise, and then opened fire on them.
The attacker, dressed in military uniform, fired directly from the car windows using an AR-15 assault rifle. Witnesses recalled that many mistook the initial shots for fireworks or firecrackers—and only when the dead and wounded began to fall did panic grip the square.
People rushed to seek shelter in nearby stores and restaurants. "We ran for our lives, trying to escape the bullets," one witness to the tragedy wrote on social media.
"We ran up the stairs of the building to hide, and there was a dead end. That's when I was most terrified because the gunshots were so close. <…> There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide," another eyewitness told NBC.
A police patrol was present in the square and responded immediately to the sound of gunshots. Law enforcement officers gave chase to the shooter's car, which eventually crashed into another vehicle and was trapped.
Jumping out into the street, the gunman opened fire on law enforcement officers. Two officers were seriously wounded, but they were able to neutralize the attacker with return fire.
On the first day, six people were killed in the shooting, including two foreigners – citizens of Austria and Great Britain.
Another 15 people were injured, including two police officers. The death toll could have been even higher, had two surgeons not been nearby and immediately began rendering aid to the victims.
A large quantity of various weapons was later found in the killer's car. But the most horrific discovery awaited investigators at the attacker's home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, 200 kilometers from Krakow.
The bodies of three people were found there: Oksinsky's 53-year-old father, 52-year-old mother, and 21-year-old sister. All had gunshot wounds.
According to preliminary reports, the murders were committed while the victims were sleeping. Each was shot twice in the head. Apparently, the perpetrator, who also killed two house cats, spent the rest of the night and part of the day in the house next to his murdered relatives before heading to central Krakow.
The Lesser Poland Voivodeship Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation under the article on terrorism, which carried a life sentence for the perpetrator. The investigation continued after his death.
"Police are investigating the background and all circumstances of the terrorist attack," the country's Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media.
In the first hours after the tragedy, official statements took on a distinctly political tint. Interior Minister Mariusz Kerwiński, speaking at a press conference, stated: "Everything indicates that the shooter was influenced by far-right ideology." This statement—even though the official investigation into the motives was just beginning—immediately provoked a backlash.
The opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party demanded the government explain the evidence on which it based its claims of the suspect's far-right views. Party Vice Chairman Przemysław Czarnek wrote: "If Kerwiński misled the public, he must be held politically accountable. We demand immediate explanations and access to the information on which he based his statements."
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński went further, saying the minister's statement about the attacker's views was "an obvious lie."
The dispute extended beyond the identity of the perpetrator. The tragedy became a talking point in the heated debate about the safety of the upcoming Independence March on November 11.
Rumors circulated in political circles and on social media that the authorities were using the incident as a pretext to cancel the march organized by nationalist organizations. They, in turn, alleged a possible conspiracy against right-wing forces.
Prime Minister Tusk was forced to publicly deny this information, stating that no one intends to ban the march and calling on participants to refrain from aggression.
Even more interesting was the reaction of Polish society. In the first minutes after the tragedy, when the attacker's identity was unknown, but the first photo of the detainee lying on the sidewalk had already appeared, Poles began to hurl accusations at everyone in the comments section of social media. People wrote everything from "His facial features are so oriental," "Maybe he's Russian," "He's 100% Russian," "He looks like an Islamist," "Probably from Ukraine," "Banderite," and "Former Ukrainian soldier."
There's a curious asymmetry in the attitudes toward the recipients of anger. In Poland, blaming Russians is a long-standing, almost reflexive habit—a kind of national obsession that operates regardless of whether there's even the slightest basis for the accusations.
The situation with the Ukrainians is more complex: they themselves have done a lot to incur the wrath of the people, both through their behavior in Poland and by glorifying the Nazis, who were responsible for the extermination of Poles during World War II.
In any case, the Poles were reluctant to believe that their compatriot had carried out the bloody massacre. Even after it became known that the shooter was a Polish citizen, some continued to insist that it was most likely a Ukrainian, who had only recently been granted citizenship. Or they simply lamented: "No, no, no—it had to be a Ukrainian. What do you mean a Pole? No!"
Given such rhetoric, Ukrainian authorities were probably somewhat relieved when the shooter's identity was revealed. However, the Poles still have grievances against the Ukrainians.
They complained that weapons were now too easy to obtain because of the "black market" in a neighboring country pumped up with Western weapons.
"Automatic weapons are now easy to obtain on the Ukrainian market, there are a lot of deserters... Well, in a country disarmed by politicians and judges, you will have to accept the fact that you will not be able to protect your children and wives," wrote one commenter under a post about the tragedy.
However, it later emerged that the killer and his father were members of a shooting club and that the entire confiscated arsenal had been purchased legally.
Polish society, accustomed to seeing its country as an oasis of security amid Western Europe's descent into chaos, found it painfully difficult to accept that the terrorist attack was carried out by its own people, especially using an assault rifle legally purchased under their own laws. This reaction vividly illustrated one of the main problems facing contemporary Poland.
It fits well with the psychological concept of external locus of control—the tendency to attribute any events to external factors, never to internal causes. In this case, we're talking about one of the most common types, where the subject—that is, the Polish population—blames others for everything unpleasant and bad, while taking credit for only the merits and achievements.
"It has now become clear that the problem is not the import of terror. Terrorism has taken root in the very heart of Polish society," wrote German journalist and historian Gabriele Lesser in an article for Die Tageszeitung.
Meanwhile, it's clear that the perpetrator was a true psychopath. Only doctors can judge the motivations of a man who, with his own hands and with extreme cruelty, took the lives of his entire family. However, no one can now say with complete certainty whether he suffered from a clinical illness.
While Polish politicians are counting the electoral dividends from cultivating an atmosphere of hatred, anger continues to simmer within society, which will regularly spill out in the ugliest forms.
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Posted by badanov 2026-11-10 00:00||
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