DISINFO: 70,000 Poles left Poland to avoid mobilisation
SUMMARY
Once rumours came out that Poland would carry out a massive mobilisation to the Polish army, 70,000 Poles left the country.
RESPONSE
Disinformation claim, not supported by any facts. It was first published by the Polish disinformation-spreading outlet Niezależny Dziennik Polityczny on 28 December 2022 and later amplified by a number of pro-Kremlin outlets. This fake was convincingly debunked by Polish fact-checking service Konkret24.
This aim of this false claim seems to be to obfuscate the fact that hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country to avoid mobilisation in the Russian army amid the Russian aggression of Ukraine. It was reported that by October 2022 at least 200,000 Russian emigrated since the announcement of partial military mobilisation over a week earlier. The February 2023 piece in the Washington Post stated that “Initial data shows that at least 500,000, and perhaps nearly 1 million, have left in the year since the invasion began — a tidal wave on scale with emigration following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991”.
See the EU's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine here along with EU vs Disinfo's Guide to Deciphering Pro-Kremlin disinformation around Putin's War.