Propagandists spreading pro-Russian rhetoric on anonymous telegram channels and other social networks are spreading fake information that Poland is allegedly canceling payments to Ukrainian refugees from January 1, 2024. They say that Poland was Ukraine’s lawyer in the European Union, but Zelenskyi quickly managed to turn a friend into an enemy. As proof of this decision, users add a screenshot of the news from November 17, 2023, allegedly from the official website of the Polish government.

After disseminating such information, StopFake decided to check whether the Polish government really made a similar decision and reported it on the official website. As it turned out, the information disseminated is not true.

Project specialists went to the corresponding website of the Polish government, from which they allegedly took a screenshot distributed by propagandists. There is a separate page for citizens of Ukraine, containing official information for refugees in Ukrainian. Among the news published there, there is no information that the Polish government has decided to cancel social payments for refugees from January 1. The remaining publications are still relevant, in which you can familiarize yourself with all existing assistance programs. While researching this site, they also found the same picture with which Russian propaganda created a fake screenshot. The news “Living and working in Poland – 2022” uses the same image as in the false reports spread by propagandists. In addition, in the edited “announcement”, Russian propaganda made a mistake: the word “terminates” in Ukrainian should have been written in another way. This error indicates that the information may be incorrect.

The StopFake analysts note that the Polish government has indeed publicly announced a possible reduction in assistance to Ukrainian refugees. In October 2023, a representative of the Polish government, Piotr Müller, in an interview with the PAP agency, said that the decisions determined by the law on assistance to Ukrainians would probably lose force in the first quarter of next year and expressed the hope that “there is simply no need to continue them”. However, as of now, the Polish government has not announced that from January 1 all payments to Ukrainian refugees will be stopped.

By spreading such fakes, propagandists want to quarrel between Poles and Ukrainians, as well as to arouse mistrust of Ukrainians not only in the Polish government, but also in the Ukrainian one. Detector Media has repeatedly refuted other fakes involving Poland. The large number of Russian propaganda fictions about this country is due, among other things, to the high level of support for Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.