2024-08-05
19 分钟It is stupid.
It is not good.
There is a powerful wind blowing from the east.
At the end of February, an image from a farmer's protest in Poland spread across social media.
In it, a man can be seen driving a tractor adorned with a banner that says Putin bring order to Ukraine, Brussels and our rulers alongside a Soviet flag.
When the photograph was released, it quickly went viral.
It got out to the world before the protest ended.
Polish media reports said police got involved by arresting and questioning the man behind it, named only as Piotrzy.
And a day after the image made waves online, the spokesperson for Poland's Ministry of Foreign affairs released a statement warning of attempts to take over the country's agricultural protest movement by groups possibly under the influence of Russian agents.
The words that came from the politicians regarding this case, but also other cases that happened around the same time were very, very strong.
The Polish Prime Minister said that any cooperation in Poland with the Russian will be burned out with iron.
I'm Kayleen Devlin and in this episode of BBC trending, we're traveling to Poland to hear from Ukrainian truckers and Polish farmers at the heart of the country's agricultural protests.
We'll try and trace the man behind the controversial banner.
Who is he?
And what does the reaction around this particular picture tell us about anxieties around Russian influence in Poland and beyond?
We have to be aware of one that Russia considers disinformation as the military tool.
Since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, Poland has been central to Europe's response.
The country has registered over 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees.
Here's Dzagoz Sokol, a reporter based in Warsaw, Poland, who's been working with me on this story.
The Polish have been very supportive of Ukraine from the beginning of the full scale invasion.