Tusk - Putin's friend pretending to be his foe.

New Polish PM launched a campaign officially aimed at investigating Russian influence in Poland. The problem is that Russian influence catches him from his own backyard and his own history.

New Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has established a committee to examine Russian influence in the Polish public sphere over the past 20 years. Some may applaud the move to remove Russian influence from any aspect of Polish public life. I would be among them if I were not aware of the extensive and longstanding connections with Russia that Donald Tusk himself fostered during his first term as Prime Minister between 2008 and 2014.

In fact, the previous conservative PiS government, which built significant military support for Ukraine during the Russian invasion and in the period leading up to it, concluded its second term by setting up a committee to investigate the same issue. This government has been out of power for almost half a year. At that time, Tusk, then the opposition leader, not only opposed the creation of this committee but also organized a 100,000-person rally in central Warsaw to protest it. However, upon assuming power in Poland, one of his first actions was to dismiss all the members of the Russian influence examination committee. Six months later, he reestablished a committee of his own. So, what does this mean, and what is the story behind both committees?

I posed this question to Arkadiusz Pulawski, a former member of the first committee and a former advisor to Poland's Minister of Coordination of Secret Services. Here is his account…

Arkadiusz Pulawski - Former member of the State Commission for the Investigation of Russian Influences on the Internal Security of the Republic of Poland from 2007 to 2022, former Deputy Director of the Department of National Security of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Republic of Poland.