Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The mass influx of refugees from Ukraine to Poland, caused by Russia’s aggression on February 24, 2022, has resulted in the application of solutions in the field of refugee law on a massive, unprecedented scale. Previously developed Polish regulations regarding the rules for granting protection to this category of people turned out to be insufficient, and the legislator decided to immediately develop new solutions for the protection of refugees from Ukraine, which were included in the Act of March 12, 2022 on assistance to citizens of Ukraine in relation to an armed conflict on the territory of that country. The provisions of this legal act constitute lex specialis in relation to the Act of June 13, 2003 on granting protection to foreigners in the territory of the Republic of Poland. The article defines a general outline of the so-called refugee law, also from a historical perspective, and includes an analysis of Polish regulations in the field of granting temporary protection to Ukrainian citizens in relation to the European Union standards. The correctness of such solutions was also evaluated.

Wars and armed conflicts have accompanied mankind from the beginning of history and belong to the category of social phenomena. They became a permanent part of the historical process and are changing with it. Throughout history, wars have changed, as have views on the phenomenon of war, on war theories and strategic concepts. These views were and are a derivative of the progress of civilization. Since the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, societies and nations have been the cause and target of wars to the larger extent than countries. Territory and power are no longer the primary causes and goals of armed conflicts. The analysis of these changes allows us to call these phenomena “new wars”. The article presents the issues of changes and transformations of wars and armed conflicts. It was stated that defining war as a political act was no longer sufficient. It was also established that in a changing world, new forms of war existed and would continue to emerge. The classic war, however, is not yet gone.

Polemology and irenology that have been evolving since the Second World War are relatively unknown. There is much misunderstanding about polemology and irenology and what can be done with research results. The methodological competition between polemology and irenology indicates their differences due to the opposite research subject (war-peace), the system of concepts, and the usefulness of research results. The aim of the article is to present the basic assumptions of irenological and polemological research and to propose a common area of research on peace and armed conflicts. The article presents a thesis about the need to integrate polemological and irenological research. Due to the research problem and the subject of research, a qualitative strategy and appropriate research methods were used in the research process. The obtained research result indicates that it is not justified to conduct research on peace and armed conflicts separately, but as a whole as a study of peace and armed conflicts. The conclusions from the research indicate that the genesis, diagnosis and prognosis of peace and conflict-related processes is justified in the range of long cycles from minus 50 to plus 50 years in relation to the started research process.