Belarusian propagandist attempts to infiltrate democratic milieux in Vilnius and Warsaw

Although he pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied as a reporter for Evraziyskaya Prav­da, Napol­s­ki now con­tributes to the pro-regime pub­li­ca­tion Min­skaya Prav­da. How­ev­er, he has recent­ly been spot­ted in War­saw and Vil­nius.

Her­man Napol­s­ki. Screen­shot from a YouTube video.

BAJ learned that Her­man Napol­s­ki, who works for a pro­pa­gan­da pub­li­ca­tion, has been mak­ing fre­quent vis­its to Vil­nius and War­saw in recent months.

He inten­tion­al­ly arranged meet­ings with jour­nal­ists from non-gov­ern­men­tal media in exile, ask­ing them for dif­fer­ent favors. A source told us:

“He fre­quent­ly and con­sis­tent­ly made these offers, like ask­ing, ‘Can you send me your notes from [Svi­at­lana] Tsikhanouskaya’s con­fer­ence? I would like to cov­er it, but I’m not accred­it­ed. Where am I going to pub­lish? I am still fig­ur­ing it out…’ It may seem naive and obses­sive, but he sent me sev­er­al sim­i­lar texts today.”

Respond­ing to alle­ga­tions that he is pub­lished by pro-regime news­pa­pers, Her­man Napol­s­ki said that he is, but that he always pro­vid­ed com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age. He hopes to find a job in a Pol­ish media out­let and is seek­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from inde­pen­dent media work­ers.

Dur­ing his recent trip to War­saw, the regime sup­port­er unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to attend the Asso­ci­a­tion of Belaru­sian Busi­ness Abroad forum.

Nonethe­less, sources say that the Min­skaya Prav­da writer worked at the forum, even if banned from enter­ing the hall. A pic­ture is avail­able of Her­man Napol­s­ki sit­ting on the couch with a lap­top.

Pho­to by Radio Unet.

It’s note­wor­thy that he had pre­vi­ous­ly expressed him­self quite clear­ly about Poland’s pol­i­cy. In an arti­cle about the Muse­um of the Sovi­et-Pol­ish Mil­i­tary Com­mon­wealth in the Leni­na Set­tle­ment, one sen­tence reads:

“In Poland, they take down mon­u­ments to Sovi­et sol­diers who freed the world from the Nazi regime, while in Belarus they com­mem­o­rate every­one who assist­ed in the fight against fas­cism.”

Since March 2022, Her­man Napol­s­ki has been writ­ing arti­cles for the pro­pa­gan­da pub­li­ca­tion Min­skaya Prav­da. His arti­cles usu­al­ly cov­er top­ics such as the Sla­vian­s­ki Bazaar, the rela­tion­ship between the gov­ern­ments of Rus­sia and Belarus, and pro-estab­lish­ment events.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is unaware of any oth­er media or orga­ni­za­tions that Napol­s­ki col­lab­o­rates with, but we feel it is impor­tant to warn oth­er jour­nal­ists against col­lab­o­rat­ing with this per­son.