Politico just published a piece claiming that “Putin the only winner as Poland’s Tusk flounders over Ukraine border fight”, which came after “Ukraine Tried To Discredit Poland By Hyping Up Its Import Of Russian Agricultural Products”. Prior to both information warfare provocations, Lvov’s mayor smeared the protesting Polish farmers as “pro-Russian provocateurs”, which was followed by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency alleging that Russia is exploiting the protests to weaken support for Kiev.
Ukraine’s emerging anti-Polish propaganda campaign clearly aims to discredit the protesters as either “Russian agents” or that country’s “useful idiots” while questioning Warsaw’s commitment to Kiev by hyping up its import of Russia’s agricultural products. The combined effect is to prompt pro-Ukrainian protests inside Poland to pressure Prime Minister Tusk from the bottom-up into cracking down on the farmers’ protests in parallel with prompting the EU to do the same from the top-down.
Politico’s participation in this campaign internationalizes it and preconditions the Western audience to expect the aforementioned scenarios. Readers are left with the impression that President Putin is meddling in Poland via “agents of influence” and/or “useful idiots” as part of his supposedly long-running attempts to divide the West from within via information warfare. The truth, however, is that the preceding narrative is actually a form of information warfare that’s intended to manipulate Westerners.
For starters, the farmers’ protests are a legitimate grassroots movement that’s supported by a whopping 78% of Poles according to an Ipsos poll from late February. Neither the participants nor their sympathizers are operating under Russian influence or as agents of that country. It’s incredibly insulting to imply that either or both of them are, and this malicious smear – which is all the more disrespectful in the Polish context – can backfire by provoking Poles to double down on their support for this movement.
About that, the second point to make is that the farmers’ protesters could morph into a modern-day form of the Old Cold War-era Solidarity movement, which could further undermine Tusk’s rule. The totalitarian tactics that he’s employed to impose his liberal-globalist vision onto Poland has plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the 1980s. His foreign patrons think that forcefully dispersing the protests could nip this movement in the bud, but that could backfire by making them more popular.
And finally, the influx of cheap Ukrainian grain onto the Polish market has endangered farmers’ livelihoods, while the low-quality thereof has enraged society’s many health-conscious members. By comparison, Russian agricultural imports are approximately one-tenth of Ukrainian ones, and their quality is much higher since they have to meet EU standards unlike Kiev. These facts comprehensively discredit the most emotive part of Ukraine’s emerging anti-Polish propaganda campaign.
Nevertheless, Politico predictably omitted them from their report, which laundered these false claims in order to mislead their targeted Western audience about the situation. It remains unclear whether Tusk will capitulate to the forthcoming pressure, but there’s no doubt that Ukraine and the West will soon pressure him like never before. They should be careful what they wish for, however, since turning the farmers’ protests into a modern-day Solidarity movement could lead to unpredictable consequences.
