Poland deports Ukrainian streamer and bans him from Schengen Area

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland has expelled a Ukrainian social media personality who became infamous for carrying out disruptive pranks in Polish public spaces. Upon being returned to Ukraine, he was also handed a 10-year ban on entry to the Schengen Area.

However, the streamer – who is called Vladyslav Oleinychenko but known online under the pseudonym Crawly – soon reemerged in the Czech capital of Prague, which is within Schengen. He criticised Poland’s actions, promised to take legal action, and denied being a Russian agent.

Oleinychenko achieved viral fame this year thanks to his provocative content, including videos of himself dressed as a green “wizard gnome” crawling around Polish shopping malls.

He has amassed almost two million followers on Instagram and almost 1.5 million on YouTube. His primary channel was previously TikTok, where he had over 6 million followers. But he was banned from the platform last month for unspecified reasons.

Oleinychenko’s pranks became increasingly disruptive as he began entering areas accessible to staff only, started bringing large groups of people to run around with him, and filmed people in public restrooms.

He also posted videos of followers jumping on cars in a city centre parking lot, sprayed a bystander with a fire extinguisher, and called Poles “stupid cuckolds” during a livestream.

These actions caught the attention of Polish authorities, who took action against the streamer. In a series of statements over the weekend, interior ministry spokesman Jacek Dobrzyński noted that Oleinychenko was detained on 29 November by Polish police and border guards.

He was subsequently expelled to Ukraine and banned from entering the Schengen zone for ten years by an executive order of the Polish interior minister. No specific reasons for the actions were provided by Dobrzyński.

“He’s already in Ukraine. The needs there are huge, he will be able to prove himself,” wrote deputy interior minister Czesław Mroczek on X.

But soon after, Oleinychenko seemed to have reemerged in Prague, according to his most recent video in which he can be seen riding in a horse carriage through the Czech capital.

He also published an official comment on the situation, announcing that accusations by the Polish authorities and media “that I am allegedly carrying out a ‘mission to destabilise the situation in the country’, as well as accusations that I am allegedly a ‘Russian spy’, will be challenged in court by me and my lawyers”.

He claimed that the accusations against him are “slander, defamation and have no basis whatsoever” and declared that “never since the communist era has freedom of speech and the ability to express oneself, including on the internet, been as threatened as it is today”.

 

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The Polish authorities have not publicly made any accusations against Oleinychenko regarding attempts to destabilise the country or that he is a Russian spy.

However, last month, the Centre for Monitoring Racist and Xenophobic Behaviour, a Polish NGO, announced that it was submitted a request to the border guard for the influencer to be expelled from Poland.

The NGO called him “a Ukrainian citizen of Belarusian ethnicity who depraves Polish children and publicly insults Poles because of their nationality…He has recently committed several hundred acts that can be classified as violations of the law in force in Poland”.

Asked by news website Wirtualna Polska about Oleinychenko’s alleged presence in Prague despite being banned from Schengen, the Polish interior ministry said that it was a matter for the Czech authorities.

However, Michał Woś, an MP for Poland’s opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has submitted an interpellation to the interior ministry highlighting that “this case raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of international cooperation in protecting the external borders of the Schengen area and enforcing the sanctions imposed”.

When PiS was previously in power, it issued a Schengen entry ban against the Ukrainian head of an NGO, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, on unspecified security grounds. However, she repeatedly flouted that ban, accepting invitations to speak at the European Parliament and Bundestag, among other places.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Crawly/YouTube

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.