DISINFO: Poland wants to hold an incorporation referendum in Western Ukraine
SUMMARY
The Russian Intelligence keeps receiving information that the Polish elites do not plan to give up their ambitious plans to establish control over the western territories of Ukraine. Before, Polish President Andrzej Duda ordered to prepare an official justification for the Polish claims to western Ukraine. Warsaw wants to organise referenda on these territories to ensure the legitimacy of the planned acquisitions.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative challenging Ukraine’s statehood and presenting Poland as a state with imperial ambitions. Apart from smearing Poland, the aim is also to deflect attention away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This disinformation message has adopted several different and sometimes contradictory forms, including allegations that Poland either wants to create a puppet proxy-state in Western Ukraine or annex these territories or that it is President Zelenskyy who wants to cede this land due to his “Polish origins”.
Poland adheres to international law regarding state borders, fully supports the independence and territorial integrity of neighbouring countries, and it rejects any “imperial” ambitions towards other countries. Poland, as well as the EU and the US, respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. No neighbouring state, except the Russian Federation, violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity in a display of imperial, revisionist aggression.
Read more about the Eastern policy of Poland here.
See our in-depth debunk of the claims of Polish historical revisionism.
See earlier disinformation cases alleging that Poland thinks that Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and South-Western Lithuania belongs to it, that Poland wants to dismember Ukraine and re-establish a Polish empire, that Ukraine is a Western colony belonging to Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Russia, that Poland will try to gain full military control in Ukrainian territories under the guise of protecting the Polish population from Russia or that Poland plans to establish control over its historical lands in Ukraine.