‘Foreign agents and local idiots’ Poland to deport 63 Ukrainians and Belarusians after stadium rap concert spirals into chaos
On Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Warsaw had begun proceedings to deport 63 foreign nationals — 57 Ukrainians and six Belarusians. The announcement followed a scandal the previous weekend at a stadium show by Max Korzh, a Belarusian performer who raps in Russian. Videos from the concert show fans dodging security guards to enter the venue’s standing section, with one person holding the flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a WWII-era nationalist paramilitary formation responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles. After the event, Polish police announced they had arrested 109 concertgoers for possession of drugs and fireworks. Here’s what we know about the incident.
‘Part of Putin’s strategy’
Two days after Belarusian rapper Max Korzh played a concert at Warsaw’s Stadion Narodowy, Polish police announced that they had arrested 109 people at the show. According to the statement, most of the detainees had been charged with “possession of drugs, assaulting security guards, bringing in pyrotechnics, and unlawful entry.”
A total of about 60,000 people attended the concert, which was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the large-scale protests against Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko over violations in the 2020 presidential election.
The Polish radio station RFM24 also reported that a group of concertgoers had waved the red-and-black flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a paramilitary group that massacred tens of thousands of Poles during World War II.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the unrest at the concert as “riots,” “acts of aggression,” and “provocations.” Commenting on the appearance of the red-and-black flag, Tusk said: “Anti-Polish gestures from Ukrainians and the fanning of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland are part of Putin’s strategy, orchestrated by foreign agents and local idiots.”
After the police announced the arrests, a Ukrainian man going by the name Dmitry posted a video saying he had been the person waving the flag and apologizing for the incident:
I had no intention of stirring up negative emotions. The flag I was holding was, for me, a symbol of support for Ukrainians. I had nothing to do with the propaganda of any regime. I only wanted to remind people about Russian aggression and the safety of our soldiers. If anyone felt offended, I apologize to you. I am grateful to all Poles who have helped Ukrainians and are helping now as well. Thank you very much from the heart, and I apologize once again.
The Kyiv Independent noted that the red-and-black flag predates the UPA and is often used in modern-day Ukraine as a symbol of resistance against Russia’s ongoing invasion.
‘The king of moshing’
Some Polish media outlets took Tusk’s remarks literally, interpreting the flag incident as evidence of a possible Russian provocation. In particular, journalist Bartłomiej Wypartowicz highlighted the presence of Alexander Swennes, a former Volgograd resident who calls himself “the king of moshing” on Instagram, in the group near the flag-waver.
On August 10, Polish lawmaker Dariusz Matecki posted a photo of Swennes on X, writing: “Hi Poles, a lot of people are talking about buses being brought in and people being sent straight to the front. I completely agree with that and support it.”
While Matecki assumed Swennes was Ukrainian, he was actually born in Gorinchem, the Netherlands, in 1999. Sergey Nemalevich, a journalist at Echo of Moscow, reported that social media suggests Swennes’s mother is from Volgograd, Russia, where he lived from 2012 to 2014. He has also competed in amateur MMA fights under the moniker “the Bulldozer from Volgograd” and has used the Instagram handle @anonymous_russian.
Over the past year and a half, Swennes has organized a number of “mosh tours,” in which participants pay several hundred euros to travel together to concerts and mosh. Most of the tours have been to see Russian rapper Morgenshtern, but this time the group attended Max Korzh’s concert.
Based on videos from Saturday’s concert, Nemalevich concluded that a group of Ukrainians, including the man carrying the UPA flag, simply joined Swennes’s group in the mosh pit. According to Nemalevich, Swennes was later accused in the Polish press of being a “Russian agent” solely because of his background.
Sign up for The Beet
Underreported stories. Fresh perspectives. From Budapest to Bishkek.
However, Nemalevich also notes a complicating detail: a Russian social media profile on VKontakte under the name Pavel Desinov that uses photos of Swennes. The user claims to be from the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and has a different birth date from Swennes. While the photos on the account, which hasn’t been updated since 2017, don’t appear on Swennes’s current profiles, facial recognition tools indicate that they depict the same person. Additionally, a SoundCloud account under the name Alexander Swennes used several of the Desinov photos. Nemalevich suggests that “Pavel Desinov” may have been a pseudonym Swennes once used.
Nemalevich reached out to Swennes for comment and posted a screenshot of their exchange. When asked about the Pavel Desinov profile, Swennes replied: “All of the information you need is available on open sources, this applies to photos as well.” He declined to provide additional comment.
We usually do the talking at fundraisers. This time, we’ll let our readers speak for us. “I’m just a regular guy who recently graduated from college and used to send Meduza a hundred rubles every month. Putin stole my country from me, took away my ability to speak out, and even my freedom to spend my own hundred rubles. Please help Meduza! Freedom for Russia!” — Anonymous