The narrative that Poland allegedly wants to appropriate Ukrainian territories has been circulating in the media for a while. But this is the first time Gwara Media fact-checkers encounter the mirror image of this idea.
Gwara Media fact-checkers team analyzed the narrative about the development of the Ukropol state, one of the proofs of which is supposed to be the appearance of Ukrainian police patrol cars on the Warsaw streets in Poland.
What happened?
On May 30, Twitter user Polscy Zjadacze Chleba published a photo of a Ukrainian police car with the following post:
“The state of Ukropol is being developed. Now there will be no Polish police, only Ukrainian police.”
Państwo Ukropol buduje się.
— Polscy Zjadacze Chleba 🇵🇱 (@willer_offical) May 30, 2023
Teraz nie będzie już Polskiej Policji, a Ukraińska policja pic.twitter.com/4OQV93xw9O
Analysis
Ford Mondeo CHIA 2.2 TurboDiesel
Let’s start with the “Ukropol” evidence base, the cars. With the help of the Polish service https://tablica-rejestracyjna.pl, we found the number plate WK 49859, registered in the Masovian Voivodeship. The first mention of this car on the website appeared back in 2017.
That is, in 2017, the car was already officially registered in the territory of Poland. In 2018, users of the resource posted a photo of this car, which clearly shows no stickers on the hood.
In 2019, the car already had a new tuning, as the photos demonstrated.
Moreover, we found this car on the Russian resource Drive2.ru, where the driver is not a Poland resident but 34-year-old Oleksandr Stupachenko, who identifies himself as a Russian. The man indicates Luhansk, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation, as his hometown.
The description of the car also states that it was purchased in 2017, which coincides with the year of its first appearance on the Polish website.
Earlier tuning modifications are also represented on the website: in 2017, on the rear left wing of the car, the owner emphasized that he is from Luhansk.
In the photo dated January 26, 2020, the FORD Mondeo’s hood is “clean” again and does not have the POLICE sticker.
Why after 2020, Oleksandr Stupchenko, who identifies himself as a resident of the Russian Federation and communicates in Russian on social networks, added a POLICE sticker to his car is unknown.
It is also worth mentioning that the Ford Mondeo of 2005 is not similar to the police cars used in Ukraine today. In the photo, it has civilian Polish license plates and no beacons, indicating it does not belong to departmental transport.
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“Ukropol”
The “Ukropol” topic was not invented by the post about the Ukrainian police car in Warsaw. It is an old pro-Kremlin narrative that got new life on May 11. Then a post was published on the Facebook network: the inscription “Ukropol becomes a fact” was added to the video featuring Jakub Kumoch, a former adviser to President Andrzej Duda.
The video fragment used in the post is part of a report published on May 4, 2023, on the YouTube channel Układ otwrty – Igor Janke (recording time 15:25) from the Polish-Ukrainian Tandem conference. The event, organized by the Mieroshevsky Center and the Ukrainian Foreign Policy Council PRISM, took place on March 6, 2023, in Kyiv.
Jakub Kumokh spoke at the conference as “former head of the International Policy Department in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland (2021-2023).”
According to the fact-checkers of the Demagog project, there is no word in the original recording about the unification of Ukraine and Poland. Instead, Kumokh talks about the bloc of the two countries. It is about cooperation, and no mention of the Ukropol formation.
In the video, Jakub Kumokh discusses the need to intensify military, economic, and scientific cooperation between Poland and Ukraine to oppose Russia’s imperial desires jointly.
Despite the superficiality of such manipulation, it was after this post that the narrative about “Ukropol” began to appear more often on social media.
Conclusions
The creation of the so-called Ukropol is a popular conspiracy theory, according to which the Poles will soon hand over power in Poland to the Ukrainians. It is the opposite of the narrative that Russian propaganda spreads in Ukraine: Poland allegedly plans to appropriate part of Ukrainian cities.
Ul. Belwederska w Warszawie – "Slawa Ukraini" ⬇️
— www.StopUkrainizacjiPolski.pl (@StopUkroPol) May 10, 2023
Tu jest Polska czy Ukropol? pic.twitter.com/hx1wmRGdot
In some versions of the conspiracy theory, the absorption of Poland by Ukraine must be preceded by the unification of the countries, resulting in Poles becoming second-class citizens. The idea is one of the elements of anti-Ukrainian propaganda, and its purpose is to cause fear among Polish citizens instead of supporting Ukrainians and Ukraine.
Read more: Fake. Russian “Kinzhal” Missiles Hit NATO Command Center in Ukraine
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by Yuliana Topolnyk and Danylo Chumakevich,
translated and edited by Tetiana Fram
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