DISINFO: The new Polish President is the ideologist of demolition of Soviet monuments
SUMMARY
In Poland, the ideologist of the demolition of Soviet monuments, declared wanted in Russia, won the Presidential election.
RESPONSE
A disinformation narrative about the 2025 Presidential elections in Poland, alleged Polish Russophobia and the “fight” over Soviet monuments.
Before his victory in the 2025 Presidential elections, the new Polish President Karol Nawrocki was the Head of the Institute of National Remembrance (2021-2025). In February 2024, he was listed as a person wanted by Russia on criminal charges connected to dismantling Red Army monuments in Poland.
The claim that Nawrocki is an “ideologist” behind the demolition of Soviet monuments in Poland is unfounded.
In 2017, Poland enacted new legislation banning totalitarian propaganda. Under this law, up to 230 Soviet-era monuments may be removed or replaced, with decisions left to local authorities. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has emphasised that Red Army burial sites and cemeteries located in Poland will remain carefully protected. Only symbolic monuments commemorating the Red Army are subject to dismantling or removal.
In 2015, Paweł Ukielski, Deputy Head of the Polish Institute of Historical Remembrance, published an open letter, in which he explained the need to remove symbolic monuments to the Soviet Red Army from Polish public places (text in Polish and Russian). According to him, these monuments are perceived as symbols of captivity by the totalitarian USSR. In some cases, the Soviet monuments glorify the Red Army generals who were involved in war crimes against the Poles.
The Polish Government does not implement a centralised policy of replacement of the Red Army monuments, such decisions are taken by the local authorities.
Read similar cases connected to the issue of the Red Army monuments - Monuments to Soviet soldiers are massively demolished and damaged in Ukraine, Poland and Baltic countries; Removal of the monument to Marshall Konev is a violation of the Czech-Russian Agreement of 1993; A monument to the Soviet soldier-liberator demolished in Lithuania.