Debunking the fakes: how things really are with inflation and currency in Poland

2 January 2025, a video was posted on the YouTube channel CTVBY, which garnered 800,000 views, with a sensational clickbait title: “Giving Up Russian Gas is Killing Poland’s Economy!”
In the video, it was stated:

Polish entrepreneurs are struggling to stay afloat as rising energy prices and a complex market situation push them to the brink of bankruptcy due to sanctions against Belarus and Russia. For almost three years now, inflation in Poland has remained consistently high, with the average annual depreciation rate of the local currency exceeding 10%. Experts note that one of the reasons for this decline is the Polish government’s refusal of Russian gas. Previously, Moscow supplied almost half of the energy market demand. Since Warsaw decided to neglect its own citizens and succumb to temptation in Brussels and Washington, residents have felt the risk and a surge in prices.

Our verdict based on conducted analyses:

Verdict: Incorrect

Reasons:

• The thesis or claim is entirely false: information from multiple sources or opinions from several experts in the specific field contradicts it.
• Cause-and-effect relationships do not exist as stated.
• When quoting, significant parts are omitted, rearranged, altered, or mistranslated from a foreign language, fundamentally changing the original meaning.
• Manipulation and distortion of statistical data.
• The event occurred significantly differently than claimed.

Verification Rating Scale

Full video:

The fake claim about currency depreciation is easily debunked using Google search, which shows the exchange rate of the Polish złoty relative to the euro or other currencies over a sufficiently long period:

Inflation is more complex, but there is also a clear illustration of disinformation:

The 2022 peak is explained by the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.

Now let’s conduct an analysis of disinformation narratives and semantic analysis: