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Ukraine faced a blockade: in the east – Russian aggression, in the west – blocking the movement of Polish trucks. The article highlights the role of Rafal Meckler, a truck driver with political ambitions, in this blockade. Meckler, who has experience in transportation to Belarus and Russia, believes that the EU should close the “corridor of solidarity” created at the beginning of the war. The blockade has cost Ukraine 1 billion euros and has already affected supplies of important goods, including drone spare parts and equipment for the armed forces.
A queue of 3,000 trucks formed at the Ukrainian-Polish border. This was the situation as of December 20. The border blockade has been going on for a month. Polish President Andrzej Duda said that the blockade is not the government’s decision, but the farmers’ decision, and that they have the right to protest. However, President Duda assured the protesters that an agreement had been reached with them. “Some time ago there was a protest by drivers, trade unions and truck drivers’ union.
And this protest was prevented precisely as a result of negotiations with the authorities, so to speak, as a result of a tripartite agreement reached between Poland, Ukraine and the drivers,” Andrzej Duda, President of Poland. In January 2024, an agreement was signed with the Ministry of Infrastructure of Poland, according to with which the protests of transport operators at the border were allegedly suspended until March 1, 2024.
The leader commented: “If a solution is not found, we will return to the border. We trust the ministry. This is not a capitulation, but a strategic pause.” However, a few days later, the blockade resumed and intensified: on February 20, demonstrators blocked the checkpoints Dorovsk – Yagodyn, Grebenne – Lava – Ruska, Medyka – Shegyny, Zoshin – Ustylug, Dolkhovychów – Ufliniv, and Korchova – Krakowiec.
The main demand of the protesters on the Polish-Ukrainian border is the restoration of the old system of granting permits to Ukrainian companies for the transportation of goods, with the exception of humanitarian aid and goods intended for the army.
In practice, however, cargo destined for the Armed Forces of Ukraine also faces obstacles. There are many other requirements, the fulfillment of which in the conditions of martial law is practically impossible for Ukraine.
Despite the fact that the local authorities revoked the permission to hold the action, the blockade of the border continues. There have been attempts at dialogue between the Polish government, the EU and Ukraine, but so far they have not brought any results. The key role in this blockade is played by the Polish political force “Confederation”. This is an ultra-right party that unites several ideologically close organizations. She calls herself a defender of the interests of ordinary Poles, peasants and workers.
In the Lublin Voivodeship, which borders Poland and Ukraine to the east, the leader of the Confederation is Rafal Mekler. Representatives of the “General Alliance” oppose sanctions against Russia, and Rafal Mekler, along with several members of the party, is already included in the “Peacemaker” list. In general, the “General Alliance” party has pro-Russian rhetoric. In this article, Morpher illustrates this with examples.
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Rafal Mekler is a person with multifaceted interests and education. He was born in the town of Radzyń Podlaski, near Lublin. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in tourism. In 2019, he studied to become a programmer at a graduate school. In 2023, he also received a higher education in the specialty “Applied Rhetoric”. Presumably took a course at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Lublin (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski), as Rafal regularly likes the posts of the course’s FB page (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
He currently states in his bio that he lives in the community of Niemce in the Lublin Voivodeship. Since May 2022, Telegram has been subscribed to the group of queues at customs to Belarus – “Queue of Brest branch of RUP Beltamozhservis”. Also signed to the border crossing group (Brest). He is fond of military affairs, classical philosophy and geopolitics (1, 2). Has pictures on his facebook with a gun.
Until now, Rafal Mekler was not a widely known politician. Although according to Rafal himself, he has been involved in political life since 2015. Allegedly, at that time he was running for the Polish Diet. However, we did not find any confirmation of this.
Later, in 2018, he ran unsuccessfully in the local elections from the party “Ruch Narodowy” (“National Movement”). This party is currently part of the association of far-right Poles called “Confederation”. Mekler, the very next year, headed the lists of the “National Movement” in Lublin, but again did not enter big politics.
Here it is worth noting that the leader of the “National Movement” party, Janusz Korvin-Mikke, made calls for the recognition of Crimea as Russian, even visiting the annexed peninsula in 2015. There he met with the Russian occupiers. In general, this party is often called pro-Russian (1, 2).
But not only political activity connects Rafal with Russia. His business also has significant connections with a terrorist country. From 2016 to 2019, he carried out transportation to the Russian Federation and Belarus (1, 2). Around the same period, he founded the company “Rema” (Rema spółka cywilna), which was engaged in wholesale trade in waste and recycled materials. In 2019, Rafal posted an advertisement for the sale of a large batch of “non-Chinese-made threaded fasteners, anchors and rods.”
During 2022 – 2023, he travels on his own in a truck (1, 2, 3), explaining that “money will not earn itself.”
However, in addition to capital from business and transport in the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation, Mekler decided to attract political capital: in April 2023, he registered the domain mekler.pl. In May 2023, Rafau Mekler took part in an informal meeting with representatives of Polish and Ukrainian carriers and transport associations.
He later wrote on Facebook that “participants are working on a solution that will satisfy both parties.” In the same month, he decided to start an election campaign as a candidate of the “Confederation” party. Rafal asked his followers to help him find places to place his Confederate banners and posters along major roads. One of Rafal Meckler’s banners. He is running for the Confederation party.
His political beliefs are extremely unstable. First, he writes that Russia is weak, will lose the war, and that the Russian elite must get rid of Putin. Then he says that Ukraine should give up Donbas and Crimea; in October 2022, he changed his position again, saying that Russia would lose; in August he said that Poland and Russia should improve their relations; in October 2023 he said that Russia was losing the war and that Poland and Russia should improve their relations.
However, one feature of Rafal’s beliefs has not changed. In his 2019 election manifesto, he stated that he opposes LGBT+ people and adoption by such couples. In the same program, he confirmed the need to expand relations with Russia and its markets. In 2019, he posted on Facebook a photo from a rally in support of the LGBT+ community and wrote in the comments that he saw protesters from Ukraine there. Rafal was one of the organizers of the march, which ended with the burning of the square. According to the commentary, a firecracker was thrown onto one of the balconies of the square and set on fire.
Like these fireworks, he also incited international enmity: in July 2023, he took part in the “Lublin March of Remembrance of the Volyn Massacre”. This event commemorated the victims of the Volyn tragedy of 1943, during which mass ethnic cleansing of Poles took place in German-occupied Volyn. Shortly before the event, Rafal Mekler posted a photo on Facebook. In his signature, he demanded the exhumation of the victims, the punishment of the perpetrators, and the construction of a mausoleum. Several posters with such demands for Ukraine featured the symbol of the “General Alliance” party.
During their march, they handed out leaflets accusing the UPA of killing 200,000 Poles, Jews, Armenians, Czechs and Ukrainians who apparently did not share the racial ideology of Stepan Bandera. This is already a frankly Russian narrative from the pages of the Kremlin manual. These and other propagandistic narratives have already been repeatedly debunked.
After this rally, Rafal Mekler received a place in the top three candidates of the “Confederation” in the Lublin District in the October elections to the Diet.
UPD Polish political force “Confederation of Confederates” is a radical right-wing European Union of Skeptics. It includes “New Hope”, “National Movement” and “Alliance of the Polish Crown”. All these political forces are conservative and adhere to far-right ideology. They are also supporters of state Catholicism, monarchism and minimalism (minimization of government powers). In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the party received 6.81% of the vote and was represented by 11 Polish deputies.
The federation was actually created in 2018: several political forces – KORWiN (Nowa Nadzieja from December 2023) and the National Movement – signed a coalition agreement. These political forces formed a single list for the elections to the European Parliament. Three parties – “National Movement”, “New Hope” and “Confederation of Polish Colonies” – formed the “Confederation” alliance, which participated in all subsequent elections.
In 2021, the Confederation and the National Movement actively advocated the lifting of quarantine restrictions, citing damage to business, service sector closures and job losses. Meckler directly accused the Moravetskyi administration of not fulfilling its promises. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, advocated the continuation of quarantine restrictions in order to protect people’s lives and health (the party’s slogan is “follow your faith”).
Janusz Ryszard Korwin-Mikke – FB, FB2, TW, TW2, TW3, TW4, Inst, YT, one of the founders and former leaders of the “Confederation”, elected from it as a member of the Seimas in 2019, was a member of the Council of Leaders of the “Confederation”. He visited Crimea after 2014 and communicated with the head of the Russian occupation administration, Aksyonov. During his time in the European Parliament, he made Nazi gestures and declared that “women are more stupid than men.” There are claims that he cooperated with Russian intelligence services.
One of his most offensive statements was: “Ukraine is the enemy, not Russia. They are now voting for Bandera’s faction.” He also claimed that Ukraine has territorial claims to Poland; in April 2022, he expressed doubts about Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine, calling the shelling of a hospital in Mariupol “staged”; in June 2022, despite the supply of large quantities of weapons to Ukrainians, he called Russia “the last enemy”. He called to “praise” Russia, which “continues to defend itself with all its might”, despite supplying Ukrainians with a large number of weapons.
Date of birth 06/13/1982
Head of the “National Movement” party since May 2023. He won the elections in October of the same year and again became a deputy of the National Assembly, this time from the Podlaskie Voivodeship in Białystok; On November 3, together with Meckler, he announced plans to protest by blocking the borders of transport vessels. On December 1, 2023, the 28th day of the protest, he and Meckler held a press conference and announced that Morawiecki’s government had one last chance to represent the interests of the Polish people instead of making concessions.
He called on Facebook to subscribe to the page of the former ambassador of Poland to Russia, who described Russia as a country of spies and disinformation. In 2019, he gave an interview to the pro-Russian media outlet “Sputnik”, the interviewer of which was Leonid Sviridov, who was once accused of spying for Russia (1, 2). Sviridov was previously expelled from the Czech Republic for the same reason. In an interview, Krzysztof said that the EU had deprived Poland of its independence in courts and regulatory bodies and that it should move towards reconciliation with Russia as “anti-European”.
In May 2022, the Polish Security Service blocked 12 Polish news sites for “spreading fake news and Russian propaganda.” Krzysztof Bosak denied this on his Twitter, in particular, regarding the website wrealu24.pl, accusing it of political censorship and calling himself a “fighter against Russian disinformation.”
Date of birth: 04.11.1986
A member of the Diet from the “Confederation”, one of the leaders of the political forces. He is also a member of the Main Board of the “National Movement” and its authorized representative at the elections. In 2023, he was elected to the Sejm as the number one member of the “Confederation” list in the Khelm district, receiving 456.9k votes (3.15%).
Witold is one of the organizers of the annual Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). As of 2023, he remains its vice president. Marsz Niepodległości is considered a march of supporters of far-right ideology. Some Western mass media wrote about the participation of “fascists and other far-right extremists” in it (1, 2).
Polish prosecutors investigated the use during these marches of “slogans, symbols and exclamations that clearly indicate a connection with prohibited ideologies or call for national, racial and religious differences.” In 2013, during the march, its participants, in particular, burned the security post of the Russian embassy in Warsaw. Commenting on this incident, Tumanovych stated that he did not approve of this attack and noted: “I will say from myself that we would very much like to have good relations with Russia and its people.”
Date of birth: 11.03.1967
Leader of the “Konfederacja Korony Polskiej” party, member of the Council of Leaders of the “Confederation”, deputy of the Seimas. He was also a member of the Diet of the previous convocation.
In January 2022, Brown was the only member of the Seimas who voted against the resolution by which the Seimas expressed its rejection of the policy of Russia and with the support of Ukraine. In June 2022, he co-authored the “Call for Peace in Central Europe”, in which he blamed Ukraine and NATO for Russia’s full-scale invasion.
In November, Brown met with the organizers of the border blockade at the Krakivets-Korchova checkpoint. Later that month, during a speech in the Sejm, he expressed his support for the participants of the blockade, saying that they were defending the sovereignty of Poland
Almost all politicians in the Confederation are either connected to Russia, or openly and deliberately follow Russian propaganda. They are the biggest supporters of closing Ukraine’s borders. This political force is taking advantage of the current situation to gain popularity.” “Allies” act as “defenders of Polish interests. But in reality, they only protect Putin’s interests and their own political ambitions. “Allies” are pro-Russian.
Their leaders have repeatedly spoken out against sanctions against Moscow. Some of them even visited Moscow and Crimea occupied by Russia. This political force not only undermines confidence in Poland’s democratic institutions, but also threatens the country’s national security and sovereignty. We hope that the Polish people will be able to critically assess the activities of this political force.
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