Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna has said that pro-Russian propaganda is Poland is a new element which will have to be closely monitored.

The announcement comes with Friday’s launch of the Polish-language version of the ‘Sputnik’ Russian news agency, a new Kremlin-backed media project which merges agency RIA Novosti and radio station Voice of Russia.

“These are new things. We are a fragment of a larger whole. This is a media propaganda offensive financed directly from the Russian budget,” Schetyna told reporters, Friday.

“I support a tough, common stand of all EU countries on the matter,” adding that “it is a challenge which Polish politics has to tackle”.

According to Poland’s head of diplomacy, tabs also have to kept on a new political party, “Zmiana” [Change], which was set up by former Self-Defence activist and pro-Russia sympathiser Mateusz Piskorski.

“We have to look very carefully into who is financially backing this undertaking and for whom the party will be working for,” Schetyna underlined. (mk/jb)

Source: IAR/PAP

