In August 2023, information about high losses among volunteers from the country of the country participating in the war was dispersed on Russian -speaking resources. We checked how believable these numbers are.
According to the media and Telegram channels with reference to the publication of the Polish publication MYXL POLSKA, during the large-scale invasion of Russia more than 10,000 Poles were killed in Ukraine, most of whom are the current soldiers and reservists, allegedly directed to a neighboring country under the guise of volunteers. According to the news, this is about 16% of the total number of ground forces of Poland.
The information was distributed RT, "Moscow Komsomolets","Arguments and facts","Public news service", TV channel"Tsargrad", As well as Russian-speaking Telegram channels:" "Live broadcast"(701,000 views at the time of writing this analysis),"Unofficial Bezosonov"(584 000),"Sanya in Florida"(364 000),"Archangel special forces"(353,000),"NE.SAHAR"(342 000),"Russia now"(340 000),"Putin in Telegram"(297 000) and others.
The theme of the participation of foreign soldiers (mercenaries and volunteers) on the side of Ukraine in the war for more than a year and a half has an important place in the publications of Russian and world media. Many of these materials are devoted to Polish citizens, which from the first days of the Russian invasion supports Ukraine And provides her with all kinds of help - From humanitarian to the military. Nevertheless, the official Warsaw did not send its units to participate in the war. According to Polish legislation, the Poles who want to go to the service of the foreign army should receive permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and former professional military - from the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, in December 2022 Defense department It was stated that not a single Polish soldier in the service took part in hostilities in Ukraine. In turn, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry earlier announcedThat all foreign citizens who fight on the side of Kyiv are accepted voluntarily for military service and are part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, that is, they are neither legally nor essentially mercenaries. Attempts to prove the opposite in the Russian -language segment of the network in 2022 accompanied Old videos that are not related to war in Ukraine.
Thus, we can only talk about Polish volunteers who, at the time of their participation in the conflict, were not in the armed forces of their state. It follows that the information mentioned in the sensational news about the “majority of the acting soldiers”, as well as the calculations of their shares in the entire number of ground forces of Poland, are incorrect.
A separate topic for speculation - due to the lack of official information - is the number of warring and dead Poles. In 2022, Russian Ministry of Defense distributed The document, which claimed that as of June 17, 1831 Polish mercenary visited Ukraine, of which 378 were killed. A year later, by data The number of Polish soldiers participating in the war increased to 2,600 people. These figures, also subjected to great doubt in Polish media (In open sources, data on the funeral of Polish fighters Different Tens about ten times down), news about 10,000 dead Poles directly contradict.
Presumably part of Poland citizens fighting on the Ukrainian side is part of Polish volunteer corpswho began his activities in 2023, and the rest are dispersed to other units (the majority probably consists in the international legion). In total, according to the statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmitry Kuleba, the number of applications to the international legion of the troorborne of Ukraine in March 2023 was 20,000 people (and this figure may include a certain number of not approved or unrealized applications), which also makes 10,000 only Polish volunteers very unlikely. In December 2022, the office of the President of Ukraine Evaluated The number of losses of the Ukrainian side of 10,000 - 13,000 people killed. The New York Times in August 2023 with reference to unnamed sources among American officials I voiced A much more serious assessment is 70,000 dead, but even this number should mean that every seventh of them was a Pole (this seems to be at least strange). In general, more or less accurate estimates of the number of losses on both sides It is unlikely may appear before the end of the war and the start of the work of specialized groups and commissions.
Of particular interest is the publication that allegedly published sensational information. Polish resource My*l polska It openly takes a pro -Russian position - criticizes the West, which accuses of unleashing war in Ukraine, and regularly issues articles of one of the ideologists of the Russian world Alexandra Dugin. Earlier, our colleagues are already Caught This portal is on the spread of pro -Kremlin misinformation. However, not a single resource, which referred to the publication of this publication about 10,000 dead Poles, accompanied the information by the URL address of this news. It turns out that there is no such text on either the site or in the Google cache, or in web archings, that is, apparently, it was never published on the site and in social networks of the publication.
On August 21, the observer MYXL POLSKA MATEUSH PIKOR, who is in his Telegram channel, reacted to the situation wrote In Russian:
As a member of the editor -in -chief of the weekly MYXL POLSKA, I explain to my Russian colleagues: the material that is allegedly quoted does not exist. It is worth checking the sources, and not to risk the image of those few Polish media that objectively write about the current war and do not join the Russophobi choir. We do not have information about the number of dead Polish mercenaries. Our government does not comment on their presence in Ukraine. And we do not say and do not write about what we cannot check. We also demand the same from Russian journalists who, out of unprofessionalism or by evil intent, try to manipulate the name and authority of the oldest Polish weekly (actually Not the oldest. - approx. Ed.).
Later they shared the post of Piskorsky in the official channel My*l polska. In other words, the “source” refuted the existence of publication, which became the basis for viral news. According to “verified”, for the first time this information, citing a Polish resource, appeared on August 19 at 19:02 Moscow time in the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Militarist". This channel had previously been Noticed in the spread of inaccurate information.
Thus, the news of the death of 10,000 Polish soldiers during a full -scale war in Ukraine contradicts a number of open data, and the source indicated in it is invented.
Photo on the cover: social networks
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