A quote from Mateusz Morawiecki was widely circulated on the Internet that Ukraine would be safe under Polish protectorate: “I don’t think Putin will dare to attack a country that is an active member of NATO.” We checked whether the head of the Polish government made such a statement.

Morawiecki's phrase went viral on February 6, 2023. The full intended quote is: “I don’t think Putin would dare attack a country that is an active member of NATO. He's anything but suicidal. The western territories of Ukraine will be safe if they temporarily come under the protectorate of the Polish state.”

For example, these words on February 6 live on the program “Time will show" on Channel One" was read by presenter Anatoly Kuzichev. They were also talked about on the websites “Constantinople", Life.ru, "Pravda.ru", Ura.ru, "Rosbalt", Ruinformer.com, SM.news and others (at the time of writing this analysis, some of the materials were removed). According to the search "VKontakte", social network users posted more than 300 posts with this quote (examples here, here, here, here And here). In Telegram, the channels “Putin on Telegram"(240,000 views), "Bullet"(195,000), "First People's"(190,000), Voblya (183,000), "Peacemaker"(156,000), "From the scene"(139,000), "Uncle Slava"(125,000), "Evgeny Prigozhin on Telegram"(114,000), "Cartridge"(101,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(101,000), "What happened?"(100,000), "Yakov Kedmi"(85,000), "Ostashko! Important"(78,000 at the time the entry was deleted), "Staff Correspondent"(54,000), "Ilya Kiva - zov blood" (44,000) and "Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(17,000). The quote can also be found on Twitter (here And here), "Zene", LiveJournal and on "Peekaboo"

Video: recording Anatoly Shariya / Channel One

None of the above publications in the media and social networks contain a link to the original source, which would indicate where, when and under what circumstances Morawiecki uttered the quote that interests us. “Verified” it was not possible to find this statement from the politician in any official twitter Morawiecki, nor on website The Office of the Polish Prime Minister, nor in the English- or Polish-language reputable media.

The quote was most widespread on Telegram (according to the service TGStat, more than 600 publications with Morawiecki's words in question were posted on this platform, in total they received more than 5 million views). In addition, posts about the prime minister’s statement appeared there earlier than on other social networks, so we decided to start searching for the original source with Telegram. The earliest publication was posted in the channel "And here is my Yandex wallet"(more than 18,000 subscribers and 44,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) February 6, 2023 at 13:00 Moscow time.

This is not the first time that this Telegram channel has been the primary source of misinformation that has spread across social networks and the media. For example, “Verified” has already written about the fictitious fiction that first appeared in this channel. history about the death of a person during the demolition of the monument to Pushkin in Zhitomir and a fake quote singer Monetochka, who allegedly gave the Russians an ultimatum: “Either me or Putin.” Apparently, not all Internet users pay attention to description channel “And here is my Yandex wallet,” which says: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.”

By the way, back on February 6, a few hours after the initial humorous publication about Morawiecki and his statement, the channel “But my Yandex wallet” made fun of the media, which took the humorous post seriously. For example, the authors of the channel reposted a post by Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy, who wrote: “Russian media of the first level carry Morawiecki’s statement that he is asking to transfer “a part of Western Ukraine to temporary management.” I'm 99.99% sure this is a hoax. Doesn’t RosSMI get tired of disgracing itself?” After that in the channel appeared such a post: “A channel with 17,000 [subscribers] plays on a buoy with official media and all sorts of bloggers like Sharia. Everything is for you, beloved subscriber friends. Let’s continue to fight the bores.”

And on February 7 in the channel “Here is my Yandex wallet” it turned out a humorous refutation of Morawiecki’s quote: ““Give this bastard over to Poland.” Morawiecki demanded that Russia arrest the channel administrator, who joked about transferring the territories of Western Ukraine to Poland. “Where did he get this from? I have not yet offered Zelensky to return our historical territories. The joker must answer in court. Arrest and extradite this scumbag to Poland.” This post did not provoke a similar reaction from the media, which actively quoted Morawiecki's first fictitious statement.