Investigative journalist Tomasz Piątek.
Image: dpa
Polish investigative journalist Tomasz Piątek has been sentenced in court. He slandered an army colonel as a Putin fan. If you look at what the colonel said, the verdict seems absurd.
Dhe Polish journalist Tomasz Piątek has been convicted by the Warsaw City District Court in a secret but sensational trial. The opponent was Krzysztof Gaj, a colonel in the Polish army. The point of contention is timely: it is about Ukraine and Russia, which has been waging a covert war in the Donbass region since 2014, well before the February 24 attack. In his 2017 book Macierewicz and His Secrets, about former defense minister Antoni Macierewicz and his associates, Piątek cited post-2014 publications by the colonel, calling him “proputinist” and “anti-Ukrainian.” Gaj had published the text “Fascists at our gates” on a Polish internet portal; meant the Ukrainians. Gaj wrote that he understood Russian ruler Vladimir Putin well: “They are fascists. And Putin is absolutely right: you have to fight them.” In these words, the resentment that some right-wing circles in Warsaw cultivated, at least until the outbreak of war in February, touches on a central narrative of Russian state propaganda: Ukrainians who insist on their independence , are slandered as “fascists”.
The trial is part of a battle Piątek put up with said former Defense Minister Macierewicz and his entourage. The journalist won several lawsuits. Piątek had had the audacity to describe in his book, which sold around 100,000 copies, connections – even to the point of actual collaboration – between those close to Macierewicz, including two state secretaries at the time, and pro-Kremlin activists, including a suspected Russian agent to point out. In other words, between right-wingers in Poland that are officially critical of Putin and pro-Russian forces. Macierewicz is still deputy to party leader Jarosław Kaczyński in the governing PiS party.