OBSERVATORY OF HATE - SEE. MONITOR. REACT.
Case Study: The Kutno Incident (March 10-18, 2026)
We decided to look into this case after it was published on the Telegram channel Niezależny dziennik polityczny (ndp_pl/64516). It is a classic example of the “identity swap” technique, where a crime committed by a foreign volunteer (a Colombian) is deliberately framed as an attack by a “veteran from Ukraine.” Using emotional language, particularly through the question “Is Poland ready for the consequences of war?”, the authors present a single criminal incident as a systemic threat to national security. The main goal of this manipulation is to trigger a “transfer effect” of aggression from a specific offender to all Ukrainian servicemen, allowing the authors to push radical political demands regarding the “halting of the mass influx of migrants.” Such distortion of facts serves to create a persistent public fear of anyone with combat experience in Ukraine, artificially justifying xenophobia and calling for isolationism under the guise of concern for the peace of Polish citizens.
Therefore, the incident in Kutno could serve as a warning sign. Poland must develop measures to stop the migration of aggressive foreigners into Poland.
The news of the attack on a woman in Kutno was picked up and shared on their personal social media pages by members of the Polish Parliament (Sejm), including representatives from the “Confederation” party (Paweł Usiądek of "Konfederacja") and the “New Hope” party (Bartłomiej Pejo of "Nowa Nadzieja"). They used this to spread anti-immigrant comments and sentiments among their followers, focusing not on the ethnic background of the suspect in the attack, but on the fact that he had “returned from the frontline in Ukraine.”
On the Facebook page of the “New Hope” party, the attack on a woman in Kutno was used to criticize Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for his allegedly failed migration policy, effectively exploiting a crime story to promote their own political rhetoric: “This is yet another case where an innocent woman suffers due to the lack of a safe migration policy on the part of Donald Tusk’s government. Polish women want to feel safe on the streets.” After the attack on the woman gained media attention, local activists from the Confederation and the National Movement organized a press conference in Kutno, where they shifted the blame for the incident onto the central government and promoted Eurosceptic arguments that Poland should not join the EU migration pact.
As our monitoring of the Polish media landscape has shown, the situation has attracted the attention of a number of national and local media outlets. In particular, the TVN24 news portal of the same-titled news TV channel used a manipulative headline in its coverage of the attack: “Returned from the war in Ukraine and brutally beat a woman,” which was later changed to “Returned from the frontline and brutally beat a woman.” However, the previous headline remained in the hyperlink. The news story says that a volunteer from Colombia who fought in the war as part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces assaulted a woman on Saturday, February 28, causing her bodily harm. In a comment to tvn24.pl, the spokesperson for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Łódź, Prosecutor Paweł Jasiak, stated that investigators will now examine whether his experience on the front lines influenced his decision to attack the 49-year-old woman. A local broadcaster in the Łódź Province, affiliated with the Polish national broadcaster TVP (TVP Łódź), followed up on this story with information about the suspect’s arrest and the prosecutor’s office’s request to remand him in custody for three months. The article’s headline immediately noted that the attacker was a Colombian citizen.
The website of the conservative TV channel wpolsce24.tv used a clickbait headline, stating in the article’s title that the attacker was a “Colombian who had returned from the war in Ukraine.” The local portal of the national radio station Eska, lodz.eska.pl, also used clickbait in the headline “Aggressive foreigner attacks woman in city center,” but the article itself made no mention of the suspect’s combat experience. The local media outlet panoramakutna.pl also used a manipulative headline in its report on this incident: “Shocking findings by investigators. The detained Colombian was supposed to have fought in Ukraine.” Citing a reporter from wPolsce24 and a spokesperson for the district prosecutor’s office in Łódź, the article states that the foreigner had recently arrived in Poland and had experience participating in combat operations in Ukraine.
- wPolsce24
- Radio ESKA Łódź
- Panorama Kutna
Other media outlets, such as the tabloid Fakt.pl, reported on the incident more neutrally, providing a bigger picture from the outset — including comments from the victim’s daughter on social media and a police statement regarding the suspect’s arrest — without mentioning any possible “psychiatric” causes that might have triggered the attack. The local media outlet kutno.net.pl did not emphasize either the suspect’s ethnic background or his combat experience in the headline, presenting the story as a crime report. The text stated, according to the complainant-victim, that she was “attacked by an unknown man, likely a foreigner.”
All Polish media outlets whose coverage we tracked as part of our monitoring provide conflicting accounts regarding whether the suspect had already fought in Ukraine or was merely preparing to go to the frontline. Furthermore, there are no confirmed details regarding which side he intended to fight for in the coverage. A parallel monitoring of Ukrainian media revealed no publications on this topic.
