The information about 10,000 Poles allegedly dying in Russia’s war against Ukraine is baseless. The publication in Myśl Polska, which is cited by the Russian media, does not exist. This was announced by the media’s editorial board.
The Russian media, referring to the Polish source Myśl Polska, are massively spreading the information that at least 10,000 Poles allegedly died during the year and a half of Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Most of the dead are listed according to statistics as volunteers of the Armed Forces or foreign mercenaries, but in reality they continued to remain Polish servicemen and reservists. They went to the front line only under the pretense of being volunteers,” Russian media write.
This story was published by RT, AiF, MK.ru, Voennoe obozrenie and others.
The first to spread this information was a media source Rossiyskaya gazeta. The link to the original source in their story leads to the Myśl Polska website main page. However, StopFake journalists could not find such an article on this site.
It should be noted that Myśl Polska has been repeatedly caught spreading Kremlin propaganda narratives about the war in Ukraine. For example, StopFake journalists have already refuted various disinformation reports that Poland is allegedly preparing for war due to Ukraine’s defeat, and that many Ukrainian refugees see Poland as a cash cow.
But this time, even the editorial board of Myśl Polska drew attention to the fact that the information spread by the Russian media is unreliable, and that they have never published such data. Mateusz Piskorski, one of the members of the editorial board, now accused by the Polish authorities of espionage in favor of Russia, wrote in his Telegram channel: “As a Myśl Polska editorial board member, I explain to my Russian colleagues: the story they allegedly cite does not exist. It is worth checking the sources, and not risking the image of the few Polish mass media that write about the current war objectively and do not join the Russophobic chorus. We have no information about the number of dead Polish mercenaries. Our government does not comment on their presence in Ukraine.”
Currently, the number of Poles defending Ukraine against Russian military aggression is unknown. Instead, the Polish authorities have repeatedly stated that there is not a single soldier in active service among the Poles who fought on the territory of Ukraine.
The number of Polish citizens who died on the territory of Ukraine since the beginning of the war is also unknown. In a comment to the Polish media Onet Wiadomosci, an expert from the Center for Research on Extremism (C-Rex) of the Oslo University, Katsper Czekak, said that the number of dead Polish citizens does not amount to several hundreds, as previously stated by the Russian Defense Ministry. The expert believes that such a number of burial ceremonies would have been easily discovered by the Polish media.
Kremlin propaganda regularly spreads disinformation about thousands of Polish mercenaries who have allegedly died since Russia’s war against Ukraine began. Read more in StopFake stories.
