Propagandists are trying to make the most of Polish Judge Tomasz Szmydt’s defection to Belarus. For Minsk, it is a glorious opportunity to demonize the West and praise Alaksandar Łukašenka.
Tomasz Szmydt in Hrodna on May 12
Szmydt has been quoted by every propaganda outlet. He claimed that Poland’s independence is in question because his country is ruled by the Americans, alleging that he could not speak out in Poland for fear of reprisals. He accused Anglo-Saxons of trying to pit Slavic peoples against each other. He glorified freedom in Łukašenka’s Belarus and defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
No surprise, the person who asked Łukašenka for protection could not possibly have anything else to say.
Good, patriotic Pole
The Warsaw District Court, at a hearing without the defendant being present on May 15, ordered Szmydt’s arrest for three months.
The prosecutor’s office accused him of spying for a foreign secret service and involvement in hybrid information warfare against the Polish state.
On May 9, Łukašenka said that Szmydt’s escape to Belarus was “a sucker punch” to Warsaw. The Belarusian ruler described him as a good patriotic Pole.
Belarusian propagandists refer to him as dissident, in contrast to Łukašenka’s political opponents labeled criminals, extremists and scoundrels.
Łukašenka pushed back against any suggestion that Szmydt is a traitor. “They say we recruited him. Look, that is nonsense. If we recruited him, put the facts on the table,” he said.
The state news agency BelTA quoted Sergei Karnaukhov, a Russian expert on spy agencies, as saying that Szmydt had allegedly communicated with him “for a long time” to discuss a place to escape. Therefore, the Pole discussed defection while serving as a judge, since he asked for resignation in Belarus.
Music to Łukašenka’s ears
Szmydt claimed that many ordinary Poles do not support Warsaw’s policies, but cannot say so publicly. It was music to Łukašenka’s ears.
After all, the Belarusian strongman relies on communist propaganda messages, saying that common people in the West are groaning under the yoke of capitalists.
In what has become his signature style, the Belarusian ruler sends his greetings to the peoples, not leaders of Western countries on national holidays, while addressing both leaders and the peoples of Russia and Russia-friendly countries on similar occasions.
“The Lithuanians and Latvians are normal people. They had bad luck with their leaders, what can I say? But that is their problem. I think that the Lithuanians and Latvians will solve this problem soon at elections,” Łukašenka said in October last year.
Meanwhile, voters in these and other EU countries keep changing governments, while Belarusians, who demanded an honest vote count in 2020, face reprisals that continue to this day.
Belarussians flee amid crackdown
Propagandist Alaksiej Dziermant is confident that “there will be more and more people like Judge Tomasz and his other compatriots who have moved to us.”
Szmydt is the second defector in the last three years after Emil Czeczko, a Polish solder who crossed into Belarus in late 2021.
Czeczko accused Polish law enforcers of shooting illegal migrants. “Within ten days of my participation in the shootings, between 200 and 700 people could have been killed,” he claimed.
Propaganda’s interest in Czeczko had quickly waned, and he was eventually found hanged in his Minsk apartment.
On May 9, Łukašenka created a stir by saying that Czeczko had been murdered. He said he provided security for Szmydt “so that these scoundrels don’t kill the man.”
The caption under this photo posted on Szmydt's Telegram channel reads: "This is a small message to those who want to kill an innocent man."
It is quite strange that the Belarusian security services failed to protect the Polish defector, and that Łukašenka disclosed that Czeczko had been murdered more than two years after his death. The Belarusian leader is usually quick to expose enemy plots.
The truth is, those who flee to Belarus for political reasons are few and far between, while hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have fled their country from the Łukašenka regime.
Hienadź Koršunaŭ, former director of the Institute of Sociology of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences who was also forced to leave his homeland, estimated recently that between 500,000 and 600,000 people could have left Belarus after 2020.
The flaws of the Łukašenka regime are quite obvious to most people in Belarus, and therefore propaganda will find Szmydt’s story a hard sell. Still, propagandists are surely happy about such a rare catch.
Also read: Polish judge who defected to Belarus given three months under arrest in Poland
Polish court dismisses judge suspected of espionage for Minsk
Łukašenka claims Polish defector Czeczko was murdered in 2022