In August 2023, information spread across Russian-language resources about high losses among volunteers from a country neighboring Ukraine participating in the war. We checked how plausible these figures are.
As the media and Telegram channels reported, citing the publication of the Polish publication Myśl Polska, during Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 10,000 Poles died, most of whom were active soldiers and reservists, allegedly sent to the neighboring country under the guise of volunteers. According to the news, this represents about 16% of the total number of Polish ground forces.
Information disseminated RT, "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Arguments and facts", "Public news service", TV channel "Constantinople", as well as Russian-language Telegram channels: "Live broadcast"(701,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Unofficial Bezsonov"(584,000), "Sanya in Florida"(364,000), "Archangel of Special Forces"(353,000), "Ne.Sugar"(342,000), "Russia now"(340,000), "Putin on Telegram» (297,000), etc.
The topic of the participation of foreign soldiers (mercenaries and volunteers) on the side of Ukraine in the war, which has lasted more than a year and a half, occupies an important place in the publications of Russian and world media. Many of these materials are dedicated to the citizens of Poland, which has supported the Ukraine And gives her all possible help - from humanitarian to military. Nevertheless, official Warsaw did not send its units to participate in the war. According to Polish legislation, Poles who want to enlist in a foreign army must obtain permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and former professional soldiers from the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, in December 2022 defense department stated that not a single Polish soldier in service takes part in hostilities on the territory of 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 Internet in 2022 accompanied old videos not related to the war in Ukraine.
Thus, we can only talk about Polish volunteers who, at the time of their participation in the conflict, were not members of the armed forces of their state. It follows that the information about “the majority of active soldiers” mentioned in the sensational news, as well as the calculations of their share in the entire number of Polish ground forces, are incorrect.
A separate topic for speculation - due to the lack of official information - is the number of Poles fighting and killed. In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense distributed a document that stated that as of June 17, 1,831 Polish mercenaries had visited Ukraine, of which 378 died. A year later, by data of the same department, the number of Polish soldiers participating in the war increased to 2,600 people. These figures, also highly questioned by Polish media (in open sources there is information about the funerals of Polish soldiers differ tens of times down), the news about 10,000 dead Poles directly contradicts.
Presumably, some of the Polish citizens fighting on the Ukrainian side are part of Polish Volunteer Corps, which began its activities in 2023, and the rest are dispersed among other units (the majority are probably 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 Defense Legion of Ukraine as of March 2023 was 20,000 people (and this figure may include a number of unapproved or unrealized applications), which also makes it very unlikely that the deaths of 10,000 Polish volunteers alone. In December 2022, the Office of the President of Ukraine assessed the number of losses on the Ukrainian side is 10,000 - 13,000 people killed. The New York Times in August 2023, citing unnamed sources among American officials voiced a much more serious estimate is 70,000 dead, but even this number should mean that every seventh of them was Pole (this seems strange, to say the least). In general, more or less accurate estimates of the number of losses on both sides 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 Myśl Polska openly takes a pro-Russian position - criticizes the West, which it blames for starting the war in Ukraine, and regularly publishes articles by one of the ideologists of the Russian world Alexandra Dugina. Previously, our colleagues have already caught this portal is dedicated to spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation. However, not a single resource that referred to the publication of this publication about 10,000 dead Poles accompanied the information with the URL address of the specified news. It turns out that there is no such text either on the site itself, or in the Google cache, or in web archives, that is, apparently, it was never published on the site or on the publication’s social networks.
On August 21, Myśl Polska columnist Mateusz Piskorski responded to the situation in his Telegram channel wrote in Russian:
As a member of the editorial board of the weekly Myśl Polska, I explain to my Russian colleagues: the material that is allegedly quoted does not exist. It is worth checking the sources rather than risking the image of those few Polish media that write objectively about the current war and do not join the chorus of Russophobes. We do not have information about the number of Polish mercenaries killed. Our government does not comment on their presence in Ukraine. And we don’t talk or write about things we can’t verify. We demand the same from Russian journalists who, out of unprofessionalism or malicious intent, are trying to manipulate the name and authority of the oldest Polish weekly (in fact far from the oldest. — Approx. ed.).
Piskorsky’s post was later shared on the official channel Myśl Polska. In other words, the “original source” denied the existence of the publication, which became the basis for the viral news. According to “Verified”, this information with a link to a Polish resource first appeared on August 19 at 19:02 Moscow time in the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Militarist" This channel has already been spotted in the dissemination of false information.
Thus, the widely circulated news about 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 fictitious.
Cover photo: social networks
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