WARSAW

Tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Warsaw on Tuesday for Poland’s annual Independence March, an event that has become a patriotic ritual and a flashpoint for political confrontation.

This year’s edition unfolded under a heavy police presence, with a ban on pyrotechnics and politicians trading accusations. Families wrapped in white-and-red flags walked alongside football ultras, religious groups, Catholic traditionalists, neo-fascist contingents and a growing number of international far-right visitors who treat the march as a kind of European nationalist pilgrimage.

Earlier in the morning at Pilsudski Square, a solemn promotion ceremony for newly appointed generals and admirals was punctured by boos and whistles. As Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz took the stage, parts of the crowd jeered loudly — a sign of deepening hostility between the pro-EU government and supporters of the nationalist right.

Kosiniak-Kamysz responded directly in his speech: “Shouting and whistling did not bring freedom...Today we stand together, even though we have different views. Poland is our common, sacred denominator.”

For the first time in years, the Masovian Voivode banned flares and firecrackers -- a staple of the march’s visual identity. Opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party politicians accused the government of heavy-handedness. Nationalist figure Robert Bakiewicz warned of “searches” and political intimidation. Slawomir Mentzen, leader of the far-right Confederation party, mocked the ban in a video message.

By mid-afternoon, the crowd gathered at Dmowski Roundabout — named after Roman Dmowski, co-founder of Poland’s pre-war nationalist movement — before marching across the city to the National Stadium under the slogan “One Nation, Strong Poland.”

President Karol Nawrocki framed Independence Day as a warning about external pressures on Poland.

“Some politicians are ready to surrender Polish freedom piece by piece to foreign institutions and tribunals,” he said. “The president will not allow Poland to become the peacock and parrot of nations, mindlessly repeating what comes from the West.”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk offered a counter-message, writing on the US social media company X’s platform that “no one has a monopoly on patriotism. No one has the right to raise their voice against another Pole on this day.”

For participants, the march is a proud commemoration of Nov. 11, 1918, when Poland regained sovereignty after 123 years of Russian, Prussian and Austrian partition. Yet for critics, especially in Warsaw, it is an annual moment of dread. Last year, the city estimated 90,000 attendees; organizers claimed 250,000.

Independence Day was once a modest state holiday. Its transformation began after the fall of communism but accelerated dramatically in the late 2000s: 2017 was the watershed year — banners reading “Pure Blood, Sober Mind” drew international condemnation. In 2020, marchers set fire to an apartment balcony displaying a rainbow flag — an image that went around the world as an emblem of Poland’s culture wars.

As Poland reorients itself under a new government, and as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to reshape European security, the Independence March remains a barometer — not simply of right-wing mobilization, but of deeper struggles over history, identity and belonging. Its crowds, banners, chants and confrontations reveal a nation pulled between pride and insecurity, openness and defensiveness, memory and modernity.