MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s alleged role in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis has been propagated by Polish authorities to scare their own population ahead of the coming European Parliament election this May, a Polish expert in geopolitics told The Voice of Russia.
“It’s an open secret that Poland’s main political powers are using Russia to fan mass hysteria in the media, intimidate their own voters and manipulate public opinion in the run-up to the European Parliament election,” said Konrad Renkas, a prominent Polish political analyst.
According to Renkas, there is a marked difference in how Polish mainstream press and some independent media sources cover the unrest in Ukraine’s south and southeast.
”If you take Polish press, demonstrations [in eastern Ukraine] are all but non-existent, the population is absolutely happy with the policies of the new authority in Kiev,” he said.
“But should you come to Donbas or check some Western media and you’ll see that … the Kiev junta is unable to contain public discontent,” the pundit added.
Renkas said that Polish and European lawmakers preferred to close their eyes to the fact that the regime in Kiev does not enjoy popular support across Ukraine.
“No European politicians ever doubted that Mr. Yatsenyuk seized power [in Ukraine] as a result of a revolution,” he said. “But it soon turned out that Yatsenyuk couldn’t secure the support of the entire Maidan.”
He explained that the “junta” in Kiev failed to tick the three boxes of its legitimacy test: it didn’t come to power in a legitimate manner, it wasn’t recognized by the entire population (to say nothing of the global community) and it still doesn’t control all Ukrainian territory.
“In this situation, you can hardly call the Kiev government legitimate and able to guarantee stability in the country,” Renkas explained.
Federalization supporters in a number of Ukrainian cities – Kharkiv, Donetsk, Gorlovka, Slaviansk, and Kramatorsk – have refused to recognize the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian government and are urging interim authorities to hold referendums similar to the one held in Crimea last month, which led to the republic’s reunification with Russia.
