According to the head of Russia’s external intelligence service, Naryshkin, Poland is “forcing preparations” for the annexation of part of the “western Ukrainian lands” and has even spread information about the preparation of a referendum on this issue in Ukraine. Warsaw denied this.
The Polish authorities intend to receive “compensation” for helping Ukraine in the form of part of its territory – “Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and most of Ternopil regions of Ukraine”, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“In order to ensure the legitimacy of the planned territorial acquisitions, the Polish leadership has decided to use the successful Russian experience of returning the ancestral territories by holding referendums on them,” Naryshkin warned.
According to him, Polish special services have already “leaked” information to the Ukrainian mass media about preparations for holding a vote on joining Poland in Lviv Region in order to analyse the reaction of citizens.
The Ukrainian TV channel TSN wrote on 29 November that a photo of a “document” had been circulated on social networks, which showed that Warsaw was preparing to hold such a plebiscite. The Polish Foreign Ministry called the spread of these messages “disinformation”. On Twitter, spokesman Lukasz Jasina said that the photo “which was supposed to confirm these theses” was a fake and the “document” depicted on it “does not correspond to reality”.
Naryshkin said Poland was going to “act proactively and persistently” out of fears that NATO allies and Russia could agree on something in the winter. Therefore, Polish President Andrzej Duda has already instructed “to prepare an official justification of Polish claims to western Ukraine”.
The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service pointed out that “the starting point in the archival research being conducted is the Volyn Massacre of 1943” – the extermination of Poles in western Ukraine by members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (recognised as extremist and banned in Russia). According to Naryshkin, this event may be equated to an episode of genocide of the Polish people.
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