Kremlin media statements about President Zelensky's intentions to give Poland the western regions of Ukraine that once belonged to Poland have recently become a familiar detail of the information landscape; our section "Antifake" has already paid attention to them. But propagandists continue to come up with more and more details of this plan. TASS published an article under the heading "Media: Zelensky promised Poland the western part of Ukraine in exchange for help." It says :
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised Poland the western territories of Ukraine in exchange for help in carrying out a counteroffensive. This was stated by the author of the NDP portal Marek Gala.
During a visit to Ukraine, Polish President Andrzej Duda made an "unprecedented offer" to Zelensky – help and support in exchange for the Volyn, Rivne and Lviv regions, writes Gala. According to the author, at that time the Ukrainian president did not refuse the proposal of his Polish colleague, but did not agree to it either.
“Knowing in advance that the announced counter-offensive is doomed to failure, and the US pressure is increasing, Zelensky made the only right decision – to return to the topic of his first meeting with Andrzej Duda, return the western part of Ukraine to Poland, and also again offer Polish businesses to buy out the largest Ukrainian companies in exchange to repay Ukraine's external public debt,” writes Galas.
According to the author of the article, “Zelensky understands that at the moment he is hated not only by his own people, but also by everyone who invested money in him as a profitable project.” Galya believes that the President of Ukraine “remains at any cost to find means to settle monetary issues with the US and the EU, even through territorial concessions.”
The online publication Niezależny Dziennik Polityczny (The Independent Political Journal, NDP) is well known to Antifake. The fakes in it are not only the content of this or that article, but also the publication itself: most of the publications there are copied from other portals in order to create the appearance of a full-fledged media. The authors (or the author?) of the few original texts hide under pseudonyms, one of which is Marek Gala; journalists from the Polish portal True Story tried to identify them, but to no avail. The editor-in-chief in social networks used a photo of a Lithuanian doctor who has nothing to do with Polish journalism. Moreover, even the Polish origin of the publication is doubtful: according to True Story, these are unsuccessful machine translations from Russian.
The so-called Galya, talking about the plans for the transfer of territories in an article with the loud title “Before the final transfer of the eastern territories to Poland, Duda gave Zelensky one last chance. A bloody storm is coming”, relies solely on some “inside information”, and calls Zelensky’s words that there will be no borders between Ukraine and Poland in the future as evidence of its veracity. As The Insider has already pointed out, the President of Ukraine thereby only confirmed the desire to join the EU, but the Kremlin propagandists unanimously announced this as a sign of an intention to give up territories. Here, by the way, the propagandists are a little confused: one says that Zelensky is preparing to give Poland all of Ukraine, while others, like Galya, say that only a few western regions, but in this case it is not clear where the border will disappear, which is only supposed to be moved to the east .
However, there is something new in Galas’s article, for example, his explanation of Zelensky’s motivation: both the Ukrainian people and Western investors allegedly hate him.
In fact, a survey on the attitude of Ukrainians towards their president, conducted in February 2023 by the Rating sociological group, showed that 91% of respondents are satisfied with his work, and 65% would like Zelensky to be re-elected for a second term.
About American-Ukrainian relations, Galya writes such things that even TASS was embarrassed to reproduce it:
“Most importantly, the US is already demanding payment for loans, leased military equipment and supplies. As we already wrote, Ukraine under the leadership of Zelensky has accumulated debts of more than $150 billion. And this is not counting disinterested assistance.”
In fact, the United States not only does not demand immediate repayment of loans from Ukraine, but continues to help it. The law on the budget for 2023, adopted in December 2022, provides for the allocation of $44.9 billion to Ukraine (however, part of these funds will be received not by Ukraine, but by NATO countries for the purchase of weapons that they will transfer to Ukraine).
Meanwhile, the main state television channel of Belarus, Belarus 1, included the following story in its news release:
“In Ukraine, the authorities do not hide their desire to merge with Poland into a single state. In Kyiv, laws have been passed that Poles can run in Nezalezhnaya at all levels, be elected and appointed to all government bodies. And in the localities, the authorities are engaged in strengthening ties with the western neighbor, i.e. pursue an active policy of Polonization. So, in a Lviv school, students are forced to learn the anthem of Poland and its state symbols. This is evidenced by a message from the parent chat.
In fact, the law of Ukraine “On the establishment of additional legal and social guarantees for citizens of the Republic of Poland who are on the territory of Ukraine” does not contain a word about the possibility of being elected to government bodies, it only gives the Poles the opportunity to stay on the territory of Ukraine for 18 months with the right employment and the same social guarantees that are due to the citizens of Ukraine. But the most interesting thing here is the “message from the parent chat” shown in full screen, which, apparently, Belarusian TV propagandists borrowed from Russian Telegram channels.
There is no mention of this open lesson on the Internet, except for a screenshot from the parent chat – is it being conducted conspiratorially? And there is no school with such a number in Lviv. She was, but transformed into a lyceum with the same number, so the name of the chat looks at least strange.