Last week he started in Polish politics with a tiny earthquake: justice Tomasz Szmydt appeared abruptly in Minsk, where he asked the Lukashenko government for political asylum, citing the persecution he was to experience in Poland. He besides condemned the Polish authorities – “who were trying to conflict with Belarus and Russia under force from the United Kingdom and the States” – and then started performing in the propaganda Belarusian-Russian circus. He even appeared on the show of Putin's most hated tv star, Vladimir Solovev.
Shmydt's escape caused panic in the United Right camp. It was during her regulation that he first went to the Ministry of Justice and then to the new, politicized and unconstitutional National Judicial Council. He besides collaborated with a hatred group attacking judges conflicting with the government, which, as well documented media reports indicate, was formed in the Ministry of Justice headed by Zbigniew Ziobra. erstwhile the media revealed the “hate-off” scandal, The Szmydt changed the front and began to “send” his erstwhile colleagues in no way sympathetic with the government of the media – which present the Law and Justice is trying to present him as a “judge of the current government arrangement”.
As you can guess, this arrangement defends itself against putting in the hands of a hot potato with the inscription "Smidt – Judge-Hejter who turned out to be a traitor", and does everything to guarantee that the public remembers what political camp the justice owed his career in the last 8 years.
Who's Putin's man?
The 2 main camps – government and PiS – reflecting on the case of Szmydt, accuse each another of their relation with Russia, favoring it, pursuing Putin's strategical goals. Politics is becoming more and more a common cry: “You are from Rusk! No, it's the Tusk!’
Tusk, defending the climate minister in the Sejm Pauline Hening-Kloski “PiS applied for a vote of distrust against her” he attacked the Kaczyński organization as a force that, during its rule, “paralysed the services”, making them helpless against cases specified as this Shmydt. “When your services, due to the fact that you ruled, began to realize that something bad was happening on the line of the written power – the east services, [...] investigations were cut off,” said Prime Minister Tusk. He besides accused PiS of “disarmament of the Polish army”, “flashing Poland with Russian coal”, he reminded Kaczyński of the 1990s meetings with KGB agent Anatoliy Wasin, yet stated – paraphrasing the words of erstwhile MP Leszek Moczulski today, addressed in the parliament to the post-communist SLD – that the abbreviation of the Law can be read like the abbreviation of the PZPR: “payable traitors, cones of Russia”.
In response, Mariusz Kamiński, Minister and coordinator of peculiar services for the governments of PiS, wrote on the X portal that there was a minister in the Tuska government who had long been in the interest of the services due to his relation with Russia. The account of erstwhile Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was filled with entries attacking Tusk for his relation with Putin. W one There's a image of Tusk bending his head and giving his hand to Putin. Morawiecki covered them with a comment "Butts you besides pasted Putin?". The remaining entries of the erstwhile Prime Minister were likewise primitive. Tusk did not stay in debt. For respective days, the activity of the leader of the civilian Coalition on the X portal comes down to attacking the PiS in style: we print photo Georgian demonstrators holding a banner “Russia, yes to Europe‘with the signature: ‘Georgians want to give something to the PiS’.
Tusk besides announced resurrection of the peculiar committee for the examination of Russian influence in politics. Prior to the election in 2023, he appointed her PiS. At the time, she had 1 task: to present those who shaped Polish abroad policy from 2007 to 2015 as pursuing Russian interests. Even before the committee began work, then controlled by the United Right camp, public tv aired a akin communicative of a propaganda series Reset. He was so manipulated that any of the abroad experts who spoke in him cut off from the presented in him moments after the issue.
That's no way to build democratic resilience.
Both PiS and KO scope for a akin communicative in the logic of the campaign. Tusk knows that his key problem is the apathy of pro-government electorate. He wants to mobilise it, indicating an alternative: either you are voting for government parties and any roots of Poland in Europe, or the PiS, the “Russian Miru” party. In turn, the Law and Justice, reaching for Russian arguments, demonizes Tusk, as he had previously demonized him as a “actually German policy”. Based on the run almost exclusively on attacking the current Prime Minister, it cost the Law and Justice to lose power in 2023, but in the June elections to the Europarliament, unlike in the parliamentary elections in October, Kaczyński does not gotta win with all parties of the government coalition – it is adequate that even by half a percent point he defeats KO to be able to announce another victory.
The common call from Russia people brings a real problem of Russian influence in Poland to an intellectual ground floor. The PiS even operates below it. It is impossible, not falling into complete absurdity, to present KO as a “pro-Russian party”. The policy of Tusk and Sikorski from 2007 to 2015 was in no way so. On the another hand, it was based on the presumption that in a situation where the mainstream of Western politics is looking for a reset with Russia, Poland has nothing to row the another way around, due to the fact that in no way will it change the approach of Washington or European capitals and harm itself. Today, in a different political climate, the same people are leading a policy to mobilise Europe to maximum effort to counter the Russian threat.
In turn, by playing against the weakness of the European Union, by allying with right-wing populists or attacking Green Deal, conducts a policy consistent with Russia's strategical objectives. Many leaders of this formation mentally closer to the "Russian miru" – with its authoritarianism, murderism, state homophobia, the cult of uniform and national victories – than the modern West. But the policy of the Law and Justice of the first months after Putin's invasion of Ukraine besides does not let for a serious portrayal of this organization as "Russian" – regardless that for run purposes in 2023 PiS besides argued with Kiev.
The biggest problem with these common accusations is that they strengthen polarization, fuel divisions, wash assurance in the state and the full political class. So they do precisely what Russian services do in Western European countries. The threat from Russia is the most real 1 present since the Cold War. Western democracies, especially frontal ones like Poland, must build their opposition against hybrid activities, calculated to make cognitive, moral and political chaos. The reaction of the political class to the case of Szmydt does not service to build specified resilience. It will be hard to build it as long as the main opposition force is so populist and devoid of simple work for the words of a organization like the PiS – which does not change the fact that the current government should effort harder.
