At the beginning of July 2023, an image of a poster appeared on the Internet, which allegedly called on Poles to enroll in contract service in the army in order to counter the Russian threat - primarily mercenaries from the Wagner PMC. We decided to check if this is true.
On July 4, a viral image of a poster in Polish began to spread on social networks. The photograph shows the setting of public transport, and on the poster itself there is a crossed out portrait of the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin. On the top of the poster it is written: “Poland, shield of Europe.” Below is an explanation: “Voluntary-compulsory military service. Protect Europe from the crazy Russian." Even lower is the emblem of the Polish Ministry of Defense and a contact phone number. The image was widely circulated on social media. In particular, Telegram channels wrote about this “Observer🇷🇺🇺🇦"(222,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Uncle Slava"(182,000), Voblya (169,000). This photo also appeared on other social networks - for example, in Twitter, in "VKontakte" And LiveJournal.
The photo with a poster allegedly scaring Poles about Prigozhin comes amid growing tensions in Poland over redeployment Wagnerites from Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine to Belarus. After a failed mutiny attempt on June 23–24, the mercenaries called to the territory of the country Alexander Lukashenko. A month later, the situation began to seriously worry Poland: in Belarus equipped military camp for PMC "Wagner", mercenaries teach Belarusian special forces, and Lukashenko declaresthat the Wagnerites are eager to march on Warsaw. Polish Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak July 23 reportedthat the government will create a new military base near the Suwalki corridor - a section of the Polish-Lithuanian border between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation.
An image of a poster at a public transport stop appeared on social networks at the very beginning of the process of establishing mercenaries in Belarus. The phone number listed at the bottom of the poster is indeed belongs military recruitment service of the Ministry of Defense of Poland. But it was not possible to find a similar poster on the website or social networks of the military department “Verified”.
Fact checkers from AFP found outthat public transport stops like the one shown in the widely circulated photograph actually exist in Poland, namely in Krakow, where until recently they were painted blue. In 2022 old blue stops began to change to silver ones, of a more modern form (however, this process has not yet been completed).
At the same time, AFP failed find a stop where all the routes shown in the photo stop (Nos. 11, 18, 23, 52 and 62).
As follows from news According to the official Krakow city website, tram route No. 23 was canceled in January 2018. This means that the photo was taken before this time, in the period from 2012 (when the route was launched) to 2018. This was confirmed by AFP and a representative of the Krakow transport company Sebastian Koval. In addition, he helped fact checkers identify the exact location of the stop - according to him, this is the Khmelenets stop in the southwest of the city.
Another source of information is the letters MS, which are visible on the stop window. This is part of the AMS inscription - the logo of the company that operates public transport stops in Krakow.
In response to an AFP request, AMS spokeswoman Ilona Kondrat said that there had never been such posters at any of the company's facilities. To confirm her words, she sent a recent photograph of the Khmelenets stop.
Since June 2, 2023, there has been a poster dedicated to sports competitions, and not to recruitment into the army and Prigozhin.
AFP also found the original photograph, which the authors of the fake then turned into a poster with Prigozhin. In a travel blog in 2015 there was a post about the public transport system in Krakow. One of the illustrations shows the same stop: not only the landscape details and route numbers match, but even the unidentified white trash on the lawn behind the iron fence.
Finally, official representatives of the Polish Ministry of Defense also spoke out. In a letter to AFP, the department's press service said: “The ministry, including institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Defense responsible for recruiting candidates for the Polish army, are not the authors of this poster. Our logo has been used illegally or tampered with." And the person responsible for conscription for military service is General Miroslav Bryshch wrote on Twitter that the photo being circulated with Prigozhin is another attack by Russian propaganda, the purpose of which is to sow chaos.
Thus, the image of a poster with Prigozhin at a bus stop in Poland is fake. The original photo was taken no later than 2015 and then edited. The earliest mention of this poster that we were able to find was a post in the Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu", published on July 4 at 12:39 Moscow time.
Cover photo: social networks
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