Ukraine Tried To Discredit Poland By Hyping Up Its Import Of Russian Agricultural Products

The purpose behind propagating these false perceptions about Poland is to discredit its commitment to NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, after which Kiev hopes that the West will coerce Warsaw into cutting off this trade, forcibly dispersing the protesters that are blocking the border, and allowing unlimited Ukrainian imports.

Polish-Ukrainian ties have once again become troubled after Polish farmers resumed their blockade of the border to protest the continued influx of Ukrainian agricultural products on the domestic market. Although Poland comprehensively subordinated itself to Germany since the return of Berlin-backed Prime Minister Donald Tusk to power, he’s been reluctant to use force to disperse the protesters out of fear that their movement will coalesce into a modern-day version of Solidarity if he dares to do so.

These self-interested political calculations explain why he’s thus far let the situation deteriorate despite it being against the West’s interests and even flirted with temporarily closing the border in an attempt to appeal to these patriotic protesters. Tusk’s approach might of course change, but it’s important for readers to understand how everything got to this point. These developments naturally prompted panic in Ukraine and explain why it just tried to discredit Poland through an information warfare attack.

Ukrainska Pravda published a detailed report on 29 February about “How Poland continues to import Russian agricultural products”, which argues that it’s not only hypocritical but also immoral for Poland to keep up these trade ties while remaining in its fierce rivalry with Russia. It was released a few days after Poland detained one of their journalists for several hours on the Belarusian border where he was investigating the role that Belarus plays in facilitating Polish-Russian agricultural trade.

All of this makes their report sound very scandalous on the surface, but it’s actually just a lot of hot air since Ukrainska Pravda itself informed readers that these imports aren’t banned and that the level of Russian-Belarusian imports is almost ten times less than Ukrainian ones. Furthermore, they’re mostly concentrated in oilseeds and seed oils, not grain like in Ukraine’s case. These facts altogether make Poland’s import of Russian agricultural products much less disruptive than Ukrainian ones.

The average person probably won’t read all the way through their report to obtain those crucial details, however, since many just skim headlines and react based on the few words that they see. The introduction is also framed in a way that emotionally exaggerates everything in order to reinforce these false perceptions just in case someone clicks on the link and reads the first few paragraphs. This isn’t journalistic malpractice per se, but it’s definitely manipulative and thus arguably a form of propaganda.

The purpose behind propagating these false perceptions about Poland is to discredit its commitment to NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, after which Kiev hopes that the West will coerce Warsaw into cutting off this trade, forcibly dispersing the protesters, and allowing unlimited Ukrainian imports. Tusk’s reluctance to do so for self-interested political reasons might then be spun to imply that he’s considering a return of the Russian-friendly policies that characterized his previous time in power.

Such concerns were discredited after his government agreed to the German-proposed “military Schengen” with that country and the Netherlands in late January that’ll accelerate the construction of “Fortress Europe” upon which Germany is resuming its long-lost superpower trajectory with US support. Nevertheless, they can still be weaponized to mislead Westerners into agitating against him on this subject, all in order to ensure that their leaders then follow suit according to Ukraine’s plan.

From Kiev’s perspective, this blockade imperils the reliability of Western military imports for preventing the worst-case scenario of a Russian breakthrough, hence why it’s imperative to resort to any means – including information warfare and political meddling – for reopening the Polish border. This unfriendly move might backfire by turning even more Poles against Ukraine, however, which could lead to a redoubling of the border protests that deter Tusk from cracking down so as to avoid a massive backlash.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/ukraine-tried-to-discredit-poland