While U.S. media focus rightly on Ukraine’s brave resistance against Vladimir Putin’s invasion army, another major story from the region has received less attention.
I attribute this to years of Russia-originated disinformation against its smaller east-central European neighbors, targeting both liberal and conservative journalists. The story that has not yet been fully reported is the unprecedented welcome of Ukraine’s refugees, almost all of them women and children, by Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and a few other countries in east-central Europe. The largest number of Ukrainians, by now nearly 2 million, found refuge and help in Poland, a member of both the European Union and NATO and now a key player in the U.S. response to Russia’s aggression.
In my small (population roughly 7,000) hometown of Mszana Dolna, Ewa and Janusz Jasinski have already helped more than two dozen Ukrainian refugees. Their son, Grzegorz, made five trips in his car to the border, each time bringing with him Ukrainian mothers and their children. Six refugees are now living at the Jasinskis’ house, while others have been placed with other families, all free of charge. Plans are underway to get the children enrolled in schools, find Ukrainian-speaking teachers, and provide temporary employment for their mothers.
Ewa Jasinska and I grew up in Mszana Dolna and went to the same elementary school, but we have not stayed in touch. I emigrated to the United States in 1970 to escape communism. Ewa remained in Poland and was active in the Polish Girl Scouts movement, which even under communism managed to preserve some autonomy. I learned about her work with Ukrainian refugees from Facebook.
We spoke last Sunday for the first time in many years. She told me that the Ukrainian women and children under her care are still in shock, profoundly traumatized by the war waged against their country and its people by Putin. She said she often sees the women crying. They are overwhelmed with worry about their husbands and other family members left behind in Ukraine. Some are single mothers.
Among those Ewa welcomed into her home are Irina and her 13-year-old daughter, Diana. They had to walk 23 kilometers on foot to make it to the Polish border, where they were picked up by Ewa’s son.
Also staying with Ewa and her husband are Anna and her 9-year-old daughter, Marta. Before escaping to Poland, they were hiding from Russian bombs in the metro in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. After six days of being forced to live in an underground tunnel, Marta begged her mother to leave.
Marta is now feeling much better and recovering from an infection she caught while hiding with her mother in the Kyiv metro. Ewa told me that the little girl hugged her and said, “Thank you, grandma.” Ewa said she had to hold back her tears to appear strong in front of her refugee families.
This scene has been repeated thousands of times in other Polish homes. The hospitality of ordinary Polish citizens, the Polish government, and the local nongovernmental organizations has been nothing short of phenomenal. Yet this story has not received much attention from Western media, and one has to wonder why.
Not even the U.S. government-run and taxpayer-funded Voice of America, part of the $800 million federal U.S. Agency for Global Media, managed to focus on the Ukrainian refugees in its English-language coverage. I had worked there as a reporter and as VOA’s Polish Service chief in the 1980s, when the independent Solidarity trade union movement was fighting with the Soviet-backed communist regime for democracy and freedom.
The fact that Western media have largely overlooked the unprecedented solidarity today between the Poles and the Ukrainians should be blamed at least partly on the effects of Russia’s hybrid propaganda warfare over many years, targeting Western journalists and media users. The good news is that Putin’s influence operations are much less effective now since he has launched his brutal invasion of Ukraine. I’m hoping that some of the more misguided U.S. conservatives may finally begin to see Putin for who he is — a dangerous megalomaniac.
Still, over the years, his propagandists have done tremendous damage to political discourse and media, both on the Right and on the Left. He managed to dupe conservative political and media figures — former President Donald Trump and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson being two extreme examples. They should admit that they were wrong. But they are not the only ones deceived.
Putin also managed to dupe former President Barack Obama — Obama’s “Reset” with Russia is a good reminder of Putin’s cleverness. The Clintons, the Bushes, and the Biden family were all duped by him. Putin is an equal opportunity ex-KGB manipulator of Western politicians and Western media.
U.S. conservatives still seem now more vulnerable to being fooled by Russian propaganda. But Putin’s agents of influence also managed to convince Western liberals that east-central European countries, including Ukraine, are full of nationalists and anti-immigrant fascists. The damage has been done, especially in the case of Poland, which has a government that is conservative but also strongly opposed to Russian imperialism in the region.
Many of the stereotypes about east-central European countries, which have been promoted by Russian propagandists and repeated by Western media for years, are largely false. These countries are far more pro-Western and more liberal-democratic than what Americans learned from Facebook, Twitter, and the New York Times. These nations are still paying the price of their negative image.
Even now, Russian propaganda shows its impact. For several days until last Saturday, the Voice of America displayed a map showing countries providing humanitarian and other aid to Ukraine. Strangely, the countries that have given most of the assistance, including Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Moldova, were not on it. When I pointed out to the VOA and USAGM management that this kind of disinformation violates the VOA Charter, which requires accurate and balanced reporting, I received a curt response that the data VOA used did not include these countries. The message from the VOA central English newsroom editors was that they were not going to change anything on their map until they get new data.
Perhaps VOA editors and those in charge of them could not imagine that a country such as Poland, described earlier as nationalistic and run by a “right-wing” government, could take in over 1.7 million refugees and provide them with free accommodations and care in private homes, all in a few days.
It took several more emails from me over three days to get VOA to correct its “Aid to Ukraine” map. The first correction still did not include Hungary. After I suggested that VOA editors should look beyond state propaganda from Russia and not think that all Hungarians share their prime minister’s sympathy for Putin, VOA finally included Hungary on its map late Saturday.
As of March 7, Poland has taken in 1.7 million refugees, Hungary has taken in 255,000, Moldova has taken in 83,000, Slovakia has taken in 200,000, and Romania has taken in 291,000, according to the United Nations. Some Ukrainians, 53,000, went to Russia, to be safer from Putin’s aggressive war. His ally, Belarus, accepted 406 Ukrainian refugees.
The initial resistance I encountered from VOA to get it to correct its reporting to include Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Moldova shows to me the lasting power of Russian disinformation warfare. I also tried to get VOA interested in the story of the Ukrainian refugees in my Polish hometown. I received only a vague promise that it may cover it when one of its reporters goes to Poland, perhaps in the near future.
In the early 1980s, VOA Polish Service reporters could not travel to Poland. All of our coverage was done then through telephone interviews. Our reporters sometimes had to dial the same telephone number a hundred times to connect with a Solidarity leader to get uncensored news for our broadcasts.
Today, instant coverage, using sound, photos, and video, is infinitely easier. I’m hoping that under bipartisan pressure from Congress and with better independent oversight, VOA will improve in response to Putin’s war on Ukraine. But I’m also skeptical.
I have more faith in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is nonfederal but operates now with great difficulty under the umbrella of the dysfunctional USAGM bureaucracy. If Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were to be freed from that and hired some of the outstanding Russian journalists being forced by Putin to leave Russia, it could again play a major role in the media landscape, as it did during the Cold War.
I’m also hoping that American conservatives and liberals, who were so easily deceived by him, will change some of their mistaken views about Ukraine and other nations in east-central Europe. They should stop believing that these pro-Western countries are full of nationalists unfriendly toward all refugees. These nations, just as the U.S. and Western Europe, have some fringe, right-wing elements, but they have millions more compassionate people, conservatives and liberals, who cherish freedom. They are now threatened by a truly fascist autocrat who tries to make Russia an imperial power and take them out of the Western world. He must be stopped, and his propaganda must be exposed and countered.
Ted Lipien is a journalist, writer, and media freedom advocate. He was Voice of America’s Polish Service chief during Poland’s struggle for democracy and VOA’s acting associate director. He served briefly in 2020-2021 as the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
