Liberal Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed during a government meeting that “We observe activity by Russia and pro-Russian politicians —both internationally and within the country, centering around our cause”. He added that “we are witnessing tensions provoked by the Russians…through the fueling of a sense of instability, based on the aggressive behaviour of opposition politicians and the president.” This builds upon his and his government’s claims of Russian meddling in the Polish Crisis.
The aforesaid crisis was actually sparked by none other than himself after he authorized the armed seizure of the Constitutional Tribunal in a judicial coup that amounts to a German takeover of Poland by proxy to prepare Europe for war with Russia. The constitutionalists led by conservative President Karol Nawrocki have since rallied against Tusk’s putschists, pledging to resolve the Polish Crisis through the rule of law in order to restore Poland’s sovereignty that Tusk is surrendering to the German-led EU.
The country is divided between conservatives and liberals as proven by its presidential and parliamentary elections over the past decade, especially the last ones that resulted in a liberal government led by a conservative president, thus contextualizing the legislative deadlock since 2024. Each feels strongly about their views, but while the liberals’ are shaped to a large degree by like-minded American and European “NGOs” as well as their media, the conservatives’ aren’t shaped by Russia at all.
Poland is one of the most politically Russophobic places on earth, and only a statistically insignificant number of Poles look to Russia for guidance about anything. More than that might casually consume some of the information products coming from it, but that’s not because they’re Russian; it’s only due to Russian media covering stories that liberal-dominated Western media won’t touch or approaching them from a relatively more conservative angle. Russia itself, however, is treated by them with skepticism.
Russia and Poland have been rivals for over a millennium, so there’s a lot of bad blood between their states, which don’t understand each other to this day as proven by leading Russian officials from Putin on down making various faux pas about Poland in recent months as documented here. Moreover, most top “Non-Russian Pro-Russian” influencers have pushed Katyń revisionism, “jokingly” called for another partition, and/or used or defended the Polonophobic slur “Polack” (it’s like the n-word for Poles).
Average Russians have no problem with Poles, which average Poles might be unaware of, but the point is that barely any of them take seriously what the Russian government, Russian media, and most top “Non-Russian Pro-Russian” influencers say about Poland. Most instinctively doubt everything that they say for the reasons described above. That’s why Tusk and his government’s claim that Russia is behind the anti-coup protests, which the General Staff seemed to lend credence to, is such an insult to their intelligence.
Tusk therefore did the impossible by getting the over half of Poles that oppose his judicial coup to question conspiracy theories about Russia. This doesn’t mean that they’ve since become Russian-friendly, let alone pro-Russian, just that they’re no longer exhibiting the knee-jerk reaction of automatically believing every such conspiratorial claim about that country. The more that Tusk and company blame Russia for the anti-coup protests, the larger that these protests are expected to become.
