‘Russian Stooge’ Label Losing Its Sting as Polish Politicians Invoke Putin

Accusing opponents of working for the Kremlin and calling them “ruskie onuce” (literally “Russian footcloths,” a pejorative for Russian stooges) is becoming less and less effective, researchers who study political manipulation told PAP. They also acknowledged that invoking Putin as a scare tactic is not unique to Poland.

On Monday, Artur Szałabawka, a lawmaker from Law and Justice (PiS), commenting on the dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal on Radio Super FM, asked rhetorically whether Donald Tusk is “only a German viceroy, or perhaps also a Russian stooge.”

In June of this year, PiS lawmaker Małgorzata Wassermann, asked on Radio ZET whether Grzegorz Braun is a “Russian stooge,” answered: “Unfortunately, yes.” In May 2024, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, responding to Donald Tusk’s accusations of Russian influence under PiS governments, accused the current coalition of carrying out a “Russian agenda” and once again described Poland under its rule as a “German-Russian condominium.”

Politicians from the governing camp have made similar accusations against right-wing politicians. In October of this year, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, referring to the invitation of members of the Confederation of the Polish Crown to a National Security Council meeting, said: “I will not discuss Poland’s security with Russian stooges.”

In February last year, Anna Maria Żukowska, a lawmaker from the Left, commenting on a statement about the situation of Ukrainians in Poland by Karol Nawrocki, then a presidential candidate, wrote on the platform X: “Russian stooge broadcasting!” Michał Szczerba, a member of the European Parliament from the Civic Coalition, commented on Nawrocki’s words: “A drowning man clutches at straws. He incites. He lies. He speaks as Lavrov.”

Prof. Mirosław Karwat, head of the Department of Political Theory and Political Thought at the University of Warsaw, told PAP that the habitual use of this rhetorical device is not new. In his observation, it appeared earlier, at least since the annexation of Crimea and the start of armed hostilities in Donbas in 2014. However, he noted, this way of discrediting an opponent is much older and ties into Poland’s continuing disputes over pro-Russian and anti-Russian orientations.

In the assessment of Prof. Karwat, who studies social engineering and the mechanisms of political manipulation, accusing someone of deliberately acting on behalf of the Kremlin and using terms such as “Russian stooge” or “Putin’s useful idiot” does not reflect well on the politicians who resort to them. It shows, he said, that they cannot defeat an adversary with substantive arguments or keep their emotions in check.

“It is an insinuation, meaning that we attribute to someone intentions that he does not necessarily have. And even if he does, we haven’t proven it. We simply issue a verdict and stick a label on him, like on a jar. And we are satisfied, because we have escaped from giving an answer or doing an analysis,” Prof. Karwat said.

According to the expert, these statements are a typical form of emotional, moral and ideological blackmail. “We put the opponent up against a wall: if you profess views I don’t accept, or engage in activity I condemn, then you are not a Pole, but a Russian agent. Either you back down to avoid being stigmatized, or you confirm that you are one,” he explained.

The expert acknowledged that this instrument can be effective within a single information bubble. “We are talking about a polarized, even pluralistic, society. It is made up of communities and ideological groups that close themselves off and do not want to come into contact with opposing information or views. In this way they cultivate self-satisfaction and reward statements that confirm their own prejudices,” he said.

He added that in a bubble driven by prejudice and group conformity, we share and repeat the assessments of the whole group so as not to expose ourselves to suspicion that we are not part of it.

“There are many people who find the epithet ‘Russian stooge,’ repeated again and again, increasingly laughable, and there will be more and more of them. Even if someone is pleased that an opponent has been humiliated, he is still aware that such a label has not replaced an argument and has not explained anything,” Prof. Karwat noted.

Asked to assess the harm done by this rhetorical device, the PAP interviewee said that, among other things, it is raising before our eyes a generation of citizens who have had no opportunity to encounter dignified, substantive debate, polemic and rebuttal. Instead, they are being infected with squabbling and slander and are growing up in a climate of political hatred.

Asked whether Poland’s political class resorts to this tool more often than those in other European countries, he expressed the view that Poles are more predisposed to it for historical reasons.

“The complex of the partitions, of Russification under the Russian partition and of the Polish-Soviet war is still alive in us. The historical policy of successive governments of the Third Polish Republic has made the Battle of Warsaw, the Miracle on the Vistula, one of the cornerstones of citizens’ patriotic education,” Prof. Karwat said. The period of the People’s Republic of Poland also left its mark: Soviet domination gradually weakened in Polish life, but it was still felt. For subsequent generations, for whom this is now book knowledge, those experiences are coming back to life.

Dr. hab. Małgorzata Myśliwiec of the University of Silesia, a specialist in the political systems of European countries, was asked by PAP whether politicians in other European countries use this kind of rhetorical device. She said it happens less often than in Poland.

“Poland is not the only European country in whose internal affairs Russia is trying to interfere and bring about destabilization. Looking at what is happening in Spain, France or Italy, there is no doubt that it looks very similar. The independence process in Catalonia was a great example showing how Russia helped with certain destabilizing activities,” she said.

Accusations of being pro-Russian and favoring Putin have also appeared in France’s presidential campaign, among other places. As Reuters reported, during the debate before the runoff in April 2022, Emmanuel Macron accused Marine Le Pen of dependence on the Russian president, pointing to a loan her party had taken out from a Russian bank. Le Pen rejected the accusations.

As the Spanish news agency Europa Press reported, in February 2022 the leader of the right-wing Vox party, Santiago Abascal, declared that the government of Pedro Sánchez included “allies of Putin.” The charge concerned politicians from the left-wing group Unidas Podemos and their ties to the Grupo de Puebla, an informal forum for cooperation among left and center-left politicians from Latin America and Europe.

In September 2022, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, called Martin Reichardt, the head of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, “Putin’s fifth column.” The Guardian reported that this was a reaction to a trip to Russia by a group of AfD politicians and a planned visit to occupied Donbas.

In the United Kingdom in June 2024, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was accused of justifying Putin’s policies after saying in a BBC interview that the eastward expansion of NATO and the EU had provoked Russia to invade Ukraine. Then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused him of a policy of appeasement toward Moscow, and former Labour leader Keir Starmer said that Farage’s statements served Putin. Farage responded that he is not an apologist for the Russian president, the BBC reported.

Myśliwiec stressed that Poland is in a special situation because of its geopolitical location, but noted that in other political systems, such as the French and Spanish ones, politicians have at various times willingly cooperated with Russia.

“It is enough to recall the actions of Marine Le Pen, or the fact that in Spain territorial separatisms on the country’s periphery have, to a large extent, an extreme-left ideological background. Their relations with Russia were maintained for years, so pointing today to intentional actions is not without foundation,” she explained.

Another PAP interviewee, Dr. Jakub Olchowski of the Department of International Security at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin, reached a similar conclusion.

“The Russian cognitive machine supports everything that can polarize European societies. It makes no difference to it whether it supports forces that describe themselves as the patriotic right, as in Poland, for example the circles around Grzegorz Braun or Konrad Berkowicz, or the extreme left, communists or environmental groups, as long as they are sufficiently extremist. Those here may not be very strong, but in Greece, France or Germany it looks different,” Olchowski said.

The PAP interviewee, who is also an analyst on the Eastern Team of the Institute of Central Europe in Lublin, also expressed the view that, although the general rule still holds that the closer a society is to Russia’s borders, the greater its distrust of Russia, Poles, in his opinion, are not as anti-Russian as they were just a few years ago.

“Empress Catherine the Great reportedly said that ‘Poles do not need to be conquered, it is enough to set them against one another.’ I have the impression that ‘argumentum ad Putinum,’ that is, the claim that someone is Putin’s agent, was fatal just a few years ago. Now it no longer has such power. This stems from the fact that today in Poland we have openly pro-Russian circles that are not at all ashamed of it and whose narratives sell quite well,” Olchowski concluded. (PAP)