Polish filmmaker Konrad Szolajski’s new documentary looks at nearly a decade of Russian sabotage, espionage and disinformation across Central and Eastern Europe, with an eery actuality.
“Putting the whole project together took a lot of time – it was very difficult,” Konrad Szolajski explains as we meet a few hours before the international premiere of his new documentary, Putin’s Playground, in Prague on June 10.
“At the time, back in 2019, many people saw the topic of Russian espionage and sabotage activities as something of a conspiracy theory,” the Warsaw-based filmmaker tells BIRN. “They weren’t saying they didn’t believe in it, but simply questioned whether there was enough proof and whether it was a good idea to touch the issue at all.”
Yet over the next several years, Szolajski and long-term collaborator and producer Malgorzata Prociak pursued different avenues of funding and partnerships, which soon saw the project – originally intended to focus solely on Poland’s “Waitergate” wiretapping scandal of 2014 – snowball and gain a regional dimension.
Gathering more evidence and backers, Szolajski was soon put on the path of Czechia, where an arms depot with ammunition intended for Ukraine was blown up in the small town of Vrbetice, with Moscow’s figure looming tall behind the blast in 2014, the same year as the eavesdropping scandal had shaken Poland’s political landscape and facilitated the downfall of the Civic Platform government and the rise to power in 2015 of the Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party.
After receiving support from producers and film funds from several countries – Norway, Czechia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Germany and Poland – “we finally knew we could make the film in February 2022”, Szolajski says, with shooting taking place over the next several months as war raged in next-door Ukraine.
Hybrid warfare
Originally released at the Krakow Film Festival at the end of May 2024, Putin’s Playground provides an overview of Russia’s eclectic “hybrid war” activities across the Central and Eastern European region.
In Poland, Szolajski and his team focus on the “Waitergate” scandal, in which recordings were made by a group of waiters at Sowa i Przyjaciele, an upmarket eatery popular with the Warsaw elite, and the Polish Anti-War Movement, while in Czechia they examine the Vrbetice ammunition depot explosion and the PRO party of far-right agitator Jindrich Rajchl.
The journey – where both Szolajski and Prociak appear in front of the camera for the first time – also includes a look at repeated sabotage operations in Bulgaria, the separatist yearnings of Moldova’s Gagauzia region, or Latvia’s linguistic dilemmas with its large Russian-speaking minority.
Asked during the post-screening Q&A why Hungary was conspicuously absent from the film, Szolajski responded that “they’ve crossed to the other side already” and would therefore not provide a relevant sample of a country still fighting back against Russia’s hybrid influence tactics.
The 91-minute documentary is now being rolled out in Czech cinemas, with more distribution plans in the works, and will also be screened at the Odessa International Film Festival to be held in Kyiv next month.
An updated version is also being prepared to include more recent events, Szolajski tells BIRN, including the dismantling of the Prague-based Voice of Europe disinformation and corruption network.
‘Useful idiots’
When it comes to the disinformation and influence strategy, “Russian tactics are both very complex and quite simple”, Szolajski muses, explaining that they largely look to capitalise on existing frustrations in any society to bring dissatisfied citizens out onto the streets.
“They take advantage of points of conflict and divisions in our societies – whether it be poverty, vaccination, war or gender – strengthen and exploit it, pass it on to their agents of influence in respective countries, and fund all kinds of propaganda material, both online and offline,” he explains.
According to the filmmaker, the scheme is fundamentally the same everywhere, simply adapted to different local and national contexts to target issues that are the most sensitive at a given time.
Supporters of Rajchl’s PRO party in Czechia or activists for the Polish Anti-War Movement “may speak in different languages, may come from the right or the left of the political spectrum, [but] the script is pretty much the same,” Szolajski notes, “and was written in the Kremlin.”
Russian influence and propaganda tactics also tend to avoid a key pitfall, according to the Polish director. “They don’t go out saying that Russia and Putin are great,” which wouldn’t resonate too well in countries with strong anti-Russian sentiments like Poland or even the Czech Republic.
“Instead, they say things like ‘Biden is old’, ‘NATO is aggressive’, ‘the EU is bureaucratic’ and so on”, a plethora of arguments often based on half-truths that make ordinary citizens “feel like they’re in trouble” and that coming to terms with Russia, even if there is little love lost for Putin or the Russian people, is part of the solution, he says.
As the scandal surrounding the Voice of Europe media recently showed, there is a thin line between ordinary citizens, social media users or people in a position of power parroting the Kremlin’s line out of political opportunism or personal belief, and actual agents of influence bankrolled by the Russian state through obscure and possibly illegal schemes.
Taking the example of the former national-conservative PiS government in Poland, Szolajski argues that “Russia especially uses those who are ostensibly anti-Russian”, describing PiS’s hawkish tone against Moscow as “lip-service” as opposed to many of their policies, including their Eurosceptic stance, and weakening of Poland’s counterintelligence network as playing into Putin’s hands.
For Szolajski, PiS’s guilt is clear, but the level and nature of the Kremlin’s infiltration is not. “It’s not clear whether this was done under the influence of actual Russian or pro-Russian agents, or merely because they were stupid enough” to play into the hands of their ostensible rival, he says.
In other countries explored in the documentary, including Bulgaria, Moldova or Latvia, the channels of Russian influence may be more clear-cut than in Poland or Czechia.
As a result of “complete” Russian infiltration, Bulgaria refused to gather evidence on Moscow’s involvement in the repeated sabotage operations, according to Szolajski. While in Czechia, former premier Andrej Babis “simply could not not reveal” the conclusions of the BIS counterintelligence agency which, in 2021, clearly pointed the finger at Russia’s GRU in the deadly Vrbetice depot explosions.
Outsourcing
Although not included in Putin’s Playground, recent events give the documentary’s focus an eerie sense of actuality.
Poland has in recent months experienced a series of suspicious explosions and fires, many of which have been linked to Russia. And although hard-based evidence still appears to be lacking in several cases, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has spearheaded calls to crack down on Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions on the territories of EU and NATO states.
Moscow’s increasing reliance on what analysts have described as “low-cost” spying and sabotage activities has also found an echo across the border in Czechia, where a foreigner was arrested last week for attempting to set fire to a depot of Prague municipal buses. Prime Minister Petr Fiala claimed it was “highly probable” Moscow was behind the attack.
Talking to the local investigative HlidaciPes media on Monday, BIS head Michal Koudelka said the attack showed Russia’s use of foreigners, “often people with some criminal background… who may not even know they were recruited by Russia”, was part of a new tactic.
The impact of such attacks should not be underestimated, according to the head of Czech counterintelligence. “They have a psychological impact on society, they’re a part of propaganda, based on the idea that the Czech Republic is making itself a target,” he said. “It has the potential to create tensions in society”, and undermine trust in the country’s security and intelligence services.
Crucially, the way governments communicate, the media cover or citizens react to these probable and very physical attacks on sovereign territory are key to whether the Kremlin will achieve its intended goal with these actions.
“The reason I made this documentary is because today war is not so much about tanks and airplanes,” Konrad Szolajski tells BIRN, at least not yet when it comes to EU countries. “It’s about influencing and subduing countries in other ways – ways that are very dangerous because people don’t realise that they are working for Russia” or pushing the Kremlin’s agenda.
Quoting a US Strategic Command officer interviewed for the documentary, Szolajski notes that “in military terms, NATO is strong enough, we are prepared today” to face Russia, including its hybrid military tactics used in the invasion and occupation of Crimea back in 2014.
But, according to the filmmaker, Russia uses European democracies’ greatest strength, “freedom of expression and information”, against themselves to shape public opinion, progressively change policies and, eventually, sap the strength and will of a society to defend itself against aggression. And here too, whether the main culprits are “agents of influence or ‘useful idiots’ is not always clear”.
“It’s an absolute nightmare. We cannot kill our freedom of speech for the sake of safety, but we need to find tools to defend ourselves without introducing censorship,” he says.
Circling back to Poland’s recent series of suspicious arson attacks, commentators noted that pointing the finger at Russia at every incident even despite little evidence could paradoxically play into Moscow’s hands, by creating a climate of panic among the public or giving birth to galloping and self-sustaining speculative bubbles.
A combination of fear, uncertainty, and perceived helplessness that Russia – regardless of its goals or strategy – would always be able to use to its advantage.