Business owners in Podlasie, a border region in Poland, complain that they are incurring losses due to the closure of border crossings between Poland and Belarus. At the time of the report, only two out of six existing crossings were operational: one for passenger traffic and the other for freight. Entrepreneurs demanded that the Polish authorities open at least one additional border crossing. While reporting on this, the "Novosti" program on CTV on February 12, 2025, showed how retail in Bialystok, the administrative center of the Podlaskie Voivodeship, was affected.
"Due to the actions of the Polish government, the situation for entrepreneurs has become dire, without exaggeration. Stores that rely on cross-border trade are closing en masse. In Bialystok alone, seven large supermarkets were built with this clientele in mind. They now stand empty. Store owners are unable to pay rent or repay loans taken out for their businesses. Employees are losing their jobs," the program host reported.
The WTF team found that the deserted shopping malls shown in the video are not located in Bialystok. They were filmed four years ago during the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the shopping centers shown in the CTV segment turned out to be Galeria Bałtycka in Gdańsk, the city in northern Poland, and not in Białystok, which is located in the east of the country. The original video was posted online on March 20, 2020. In the CTV report, the footage was flipped horizontally.
The second shopping center shown by CTV is also located in Gdańsk and is called Forum Gdańsk. The original footage of this mall was also published back in 2020.
Additionally, on the evening of Friday, February 21, 2025, WTF journalists visited the Alfa shopping center and the Auchan hypermarket in Bialystok. Photos they took there show no lack of shoppers in the stores.
