Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 17/03/2023
False claims are being shared on social networks suggesting that a grave with hundreds of corpses of members of the military forces of Ukraine was found near the Bogdanka mine in Poland.
On March 2, 2023, the Facebook page Serbian Info Warriors posted a status suggesting that a grave with the bodies of men was discovered in Poland, near the Bogdanka mine in the east of the country. Allegedly, parts of the military clothing used by the Ukrainian army are visible on the bodies found.
In Poland, they are trying to prevent the outbreak of a scandal: in the Bogdanka coal mine, miners discovered a grave with hundreds of corpses of men in the remains of military uniforms, and there are marks of AFU units on the parts of the clothing. At the moment, the special services are investigating the workers who made a terrible discovery in the abandoned area. Some of the miners were taken to Lublin after interrogation. Many Ukrainians work at the location (the mine is 40 kilometres from the Ukrainian border), thanks to whom secret information was leaked to Ukraine.
The status also reveals that the bodies in question are the bodies of wounded soldiers of Ukraine who were transported to Poland under the guise of “fake treatment” and suggests that the allegedly found bodies are actually victims of organ trafficking.
People say that the bodies found are emaciated and they are sure that they are wounded Ukrainian soldiers who, under the guise of treatment, were taken to Poland by black transplantologists. There are many bodies – at least half a thousand.
The status with identical claims was published on several Facebook profiles (1, 2) and Twitter accounts (1, 2, 3).
What are the facts?
A search for the phrase in English for the keywords “Poland, coal mine, Bogdanka, bodies found” does not yield results that confirm that the alleged event was reported by credible media. On the other hand, the same search shows that the accuracy of allegations about the discovery of a mass grave, which were shared on Russian-speaking social networks and in some Russian media, was checked by the Ukrainian fact-checking web portal StopFake.
As stated in the analysis published on March 4, 2023, the claim that hundreds of remains with the markings of the Ukrainian army were found in the Bogdanka mine in eastern Poland is completely fabricated. Bogdanka mine spokesman Jan Matysik responded by SMS to StopFake’s inquiry about the accuracy of this claim. Matysik stated that it is fake news and that there are no military operations at the location of the mine, nor in Poland itself.
StopFake points out that the claim was originally published on the Telegram channel Septun on February 28, 2023. For the aforementioned Telegram channel, StopFake notes that it is used by Russian special services to spread anti-government narratives in Ukraine, according to reports from the country’s security service.
The claims about the supposedly found mass grave are part of a disinformation narrative according to which “foreign mercenaries” are fighting en masse on the side of Ukraine, while the Ukrainian government is trying in every possible way to hide the heavy losses in manpower, according to StopFake.
The claim that the bodies found are victims of organ trafficking is also incorrect.
First of all, no corpses were found. The claim that wounded members of the Ukrainian military are being transported to Poland to have their organs sold on the black market has been around for some time. No evidence has ever been provided to show that it is true. StopFake states that these and similar cases can’t go unnoticed.
In addition, similar cases could not remain unnoticed since the regulations regarding the crossing of the state border for the treatment of military personnel define the obligation to have a conclusion on the referral of the patient for treatment abroad, as well as a notification from the Emergency Coordination Center of the European Commission on the readiness of a specific country to receive the patient for treatment free of charge. Accordingly, the Ukrainian government, as well as numerous agencies, monitors the movement of military personnel who have gone abroad for treatment.
Since the allegation about the found grave in the Polish mine Bogdanka is completely fabricated, we assess the claim that the bodies of men in Ukrainian uniforms were found there, published on the Serbian Info Warriors Facebook page, as fake news.
We also consider the claim that these are the bodies of soldiers who were transferred from Ukraine to Poland so that their organs could be sold on the black market to be fake news. We rate the claim as a conspiracy theory.
We assess all subsequent publications of the claims as the distribution of fake news and a conspiracy theory.