Allegations about Bartosz Kownacki raise fears that hardline nationalists and pro-Russia figures are on rise in Poland’s security establishment

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A serving Polish deputy defence minister has been accused of having links with pro-Kremlin far-right groups, after a German newspaper reported that he travelled to Moscow with a far-right delegation.



Bartosz Kownacki, a key lieutenant of defence minister Antoni Macierewicz, was a member of a group of Polish international observers during Russia’s 2012 election.

He was accompanied by Mateusz Piskorski, the founder of a Polish thinktank, the European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis (ECGA) who is now in detention in Poland, facing charges of spying for Moscow.

According to the Central Russian Election Commission, Kownacki was one

of four Polish representatives of “NGOs”, alongside Piskorski and

other figures connected to his think tank.

A leading member of Piskorski’s pro-Russia Zmiana (Change) party confirmed to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) that Piskorski had made arrangements “on the Polish side” for Kownacki’s participation as an election observer.

Two years later, Piskorski was a member of a delegation to observe Crimea’s referendum to secede Ukraine – a vote which was described by the OSCE as illegal.



The FAZ report says that Kownacki also was involved alongside Piskorski in the far-right Alliance of European National Movements (AENM), a pan-European political group co-founded by far-right parties including Hungary’s Jobbik party and France’s Front National.

The British National party’s former leader, Nick Griffin, has served as a vice-president of the group, which has been at the centre of concerns that Russia is sponsoring and promoting far-right movements in an attempt to undermine European unity.

Kownacki denies Zmiana’s claim that Piskorski was involved in arranging his participation in the delegation to Moscow in 2012, saying that he travelled at the invitation of the AENM, and has had no contact with Piskorski before or since.

“It is no coincidence that the German press baselessly attacked me at the moment of [Poland] signing a key agreement with the US on the acquisition of a Patriot missile system, which may affect the interests of German defence firms,” he said.

But the Guardian has seen a text message exchange between Griffin and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which Griffin confirmed that the AENM was working with Piskorski at the time of the delegation.

In his statement, Kownacki also says that he went to Moscow as a replacement for a senator from Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). However the senator in question departed the senate in 2011, the year before the Russian presidential election.

The revelations have exacerbated concerns that Macierewicz, the defence minister, whose political roots can be traced to the radical nationalist right, is compromising his country’s security by bringing associates with hardline nationalist and pro-Russian views into the heart of Poland’s security establishment.

According to a March report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, rightwing parties in Poland have been targeted by Russian attempts to build relationships with fringe political movements across Europe, and especially in central and eastern Europe.

Documents published by a Ukrainian website revealed extensive contacts between Alyaksandr Usovsky – the coordinator of “a loose network of nationalists, radicals, and neofascists across eastern Europe” – and a number of nationalist Polish parties.

The documents suggest that in addition to maintaining contact with Piskorski, Usovsky transferred €100,000 (£88,615) in 2014 to the far-right Great Poland Camp party (OGP) and other groups in order to promote rallies denouncing the Ukrainian government and defending Russian actions in Ukraine.

Piskorski’s Zmiana party, which describes itself as “the first non-American political party in Poland”, blames Polish politicians for exacerbating the Ukraine crisis and advocates a pro-Russian orientation in foreign policy.

• This article was amended on 19 July 2017 because an earlier version referred to representatives from “Polish NGOs”. The reference was to Polish representatives from NGOs, but they were not necessarily representatives of Polish NGOs.