Ukrainian soldiers stand around tanks and other military vehicles at a military base in the eastern Ukrainian town of Chuguyev, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, 06.12.2014. Photo: PAP/EPA/MYKHAYLO MARKIV / POOL
The announcement comes as Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) managed to find information pertaining to a resident of the southern Beskid highland region, with reports that the ABW is set to inform prosecutors in Katowice and Szczecin about additional cases of Poles fighting for the pro-separatists.
“Proceedings are underway in the matter,” Malgorzata Borkowska, deputy regional prosecutor in Bielsko-Biala, southern Poland, told the Rzeczpospolita daily.
According to Polish law, citizens are not permitted to fight for foreign armies, with the penal code stating that any Pole “who fights in a foreign army or foreign paramilitary organisation” may be sentenced up to five years.
According to unofficial information, the case concerns a 29-year-old activist of the Camp of Great Poland (Obóz Wielkiej Polski), a far-right nationalist organisation, who is reported to have written “I won’t sit in front of my computer at home when the West is attacking a country which is close to me” on a website.
The move from the ABW comes as at the beginning of October, Graham Phillips, a British journalist working for the Kremlin-backed Russia Today TV station, announced on Twitter that he was travelling with a Polish citizen who planned on joining the pro-Russian militia in eastern Ukraine.
The tweet shows a picture of the Pole’s passport, identifying the man as Dariusz Lemanski, born in the western village of Slonsk near the German border.
Phillips also released a video of an interview with Lemanski, who came to fight in the Donbas and who claims in the video that he wants to fight “against fascists”, calling Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “a big liar”.
It is not known, however, whether the ABW have used the digital media as evidence in its investigations. (jb)
Watch the interview with Lemanski below: