Polish foreign minister blames rule-of-law crisis on ‘alliance’ of Russian bots and ‘global far right’

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski claimed that the opponents of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s judicial overhaul were being assisted by Russian bots.Tusk and his rival, President Karol Nawrocki, haven’t budged since the latter dramatically pushed through police barricades to enter the Supreme Court and denounce the judges who tried to seize control of the judiciary. The theater of Friday and Saturday has energized Poland’s nationalist Right, while Tusk’s camp has shifted to portraying the resistance to his attempted judicial takeover as a right-wing fringe controlled by Russia.Leading this charge was Sikorski, who has become one of the faces of Europe’s Atlanticist liberals. POLISH PRESIDENT SCRAMBLES BACK FROM OVERSEAS TRIP AMID DONALD TUSK-LED ‘COUP D’ÉTAT’ AT POLICE-SWARMED CONSTITUTIONAL TRIBUNAL“Please note that we are dealing with an unprecedented scale of cooperation online between Russian accounts and propagandists, and the global far right. This is an evident alliance. Or at least collaboration. This should give all of us food for thought about who wants to stir things up in Poland and who this serves,” he said in a post on X.Tusk was among the first to explicitly blame the crisis on Russia, saying as much in his first televised address to the nation on Saturday.“It’s not my job to judge their motives today. Is it greed, stupidity, or treason? Ultimately, the effect is the same, and it’s no coincidence that they find support among pro-Russian forces worldwide, and today, in this conflict, they’re using an army of Russian bots online,” he said.Blaming the opposition to the government’s pro-EU, liberal agenda has been a hallmark of Tusk and his allies for some time. In April, Tusk took his push linking Putin to PiS and the opposition into overdrive, claiming that Russia and PiS were pursuing the same goals for Poland. Sikorski claimed Russia was waging “cognitive warfare” against Poland, and had established a “fifth column” within the country.Notably, PiS ran Poland for the first year and a half of the Russia-Ukraine war, and led the way with one of the most aggressive stances against Russia.The Kremlin, for its part, has reacted to the attempted linkage with amusement.“I love this mantra! Elections in the US? It’s Russians. Migrants in Spain? It’s Russians! Constitutional coup in Poland? Of course, it’s Russians! Thank you! Nothing unites us better than our might! Well, you know the rest … we are coming!” Dimitry Medvedev said in a post on X.Poland became engulfed in crisis on Friday after Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, one of the five judges elected by the Sejm but not confirmed by President Karol Nawrocki, announced the removal of the conservative Constitution Tribunal President Bogdan Swieczkowski, and the installation of an interim head of the court in his stead. The move has no precedent in Polish constitutional law, and was immediately denounced as a “coup.”The move appeared timed to coincide with Nawrocki’s presidential visit to Senegal. He got word of the move mid-air, turning his plane around to confront the judges in Warsaw in person.Poland has struggled with a fractured right-wing over the past few years, but the audacious move has helped unite them behind an opposition to Tusk.“There are plenty of differences between our programs. But ending Prime Minister Tusk’s government is the fundamental common goal,” Anna Bryłka, vice-president of the right-wing Confederation party, told Politico.Sikorski, Tusk, and the rest of Poland’s liberals’ other main strategy has been to exaggerate the role played by right-wing firebrand Grzegorz Braun, chairman of the right-wing Confederation of the Polish Crown. Braun attended the protest outside the Supreme Court along with thousands of others, and took a selfie standing next to PiS co-founder Jarosław Kaczyński.Tusk’s governing coalition took the link to its extreme on Saturday, posting a meme showing a mask of Kaczynski’s face coming off, exposing Braun’s face, and a grinning Russian President Vladimir Putin eating popcorn in the background.“The mask comes off,” the post was captioned.On Saturday, Nawrocki hosted crisis talks at the presidential palace. Tusk’s Civic Coalition party boycotted the talks, but most parties in the Sejm, including his own coalition parties, attended. Even though Nawrocki held talks with most of the parties in the Sejm, Tusk’s allies focused on Braun’s attendance.POLISH PRESIDENT FORCES HIS WAY INTO HIGH COURT AFTER DRAMATIC RETURN AS SUPPORTERS CLASH WITH POLICE“Braun’s place is not the Presidential Palace but the slammer,” Sikorski said in a post on X, in response to a picture of the meeting. “But hey, birds of a feather stick together.”The next flashpoint in the crisis is Tuesday, when the Supreme Court is scheduled to meet at 3:30 p.m. But whether it can reach quorum is in doubt, with even Korwin-Piotrowska saying that whether the quorum would be reached “will be determined at the assembly.”