Polish border guards refute Russian fake news about new wave of refugees from Ukraine

Polish border guards have had to refute disinformation being spread by pro-Kremlin social media accounts about a new wave of refugees entering Poland from Ukraine.

Source: European Pravda; PAP, a Polish national news agency

Details: Pro-Kremlin accounts have been claiming that the Polish-Ukrainian border is being stormed by a new wave of refugees from Ukraine. In an attempt to scare people, they have been reporting that up to 150,000 people are arriving in Poland from Ukraine every day – twice as many as usual. This increase in border traffic is allegedly due to the Ukrainians' concern about the mobilisation age being lowered.

Currently men over 25 can be called up, but the age limit may be lowered to 18 in 2025. According to Russian propaganda, large numbers of Ukrainian mothers, fearing these changes, are taking their minor sons out of Ukraine, causing queues at the border.

However, the Polish Border Guard Service has not confirmed either the figures or the phenomenon itself. Captain Dariusz Sienicki, a spokesperson for the Bug Border Guard Regional Unit, said border guards have indeed noted an increase in border traffic on the Polish-Ukrainian border over the past week, but that it applied to both directions, both to and from Poland.

Quote from Sienicki: "The increase in traffic is associated with the Christmas and New Year period, as it is every year."

More details: Longer queues at the Polish-Ukrainian border began to form on 20 December, but traffic was evenly distributed in both directions, with more people leaving Poland.

In addition, there has been no day on which 150,000 Ukrainian citizens were recorded at the border as seeking to enter Poland. The number peaked on 22 December, when nearly 89,000 Ukrainian citizens crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border, but more than half of them – almost 49,000 – were leaving Poland.

Nor are the claims of a new wave of refugees at the Polish border confirmed by NGOs that provide them with support. If there was any truth in the reports that mothers were fleeing Ukraine en masse with their sons ahead of mobilisation, many more people would have started to apply to these NGOs for legal aid before Christmas, but this did not happen.

Łukasz Adamski, Deputy Director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue, says the reports of the mass emigration of Ukrainians are deliberate disinformation derived from the Kremlin's propaganda activities and serve to stir up anti-Ukrainian prejudice among Poles.

Background:

• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stressed that he sees no point in lowering the conscription age, as the key problem is the lack of weapons and the slow pace of training for new brigades.
• In recent weeks, the United States has been urging Ukraine both publicly and privately to reduce the conscription age to 18, arguing that the shortage of personnel on the battlefield is becoming critical and that this is why Russia is able to make advances in the east.
• Disagreements over mobilisation rates and the conscription age in Ukraine have caused tension between Zelenskyy and US President Joe Biden.

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