Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kazimier Lachnovič/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets



 * Tools: Editor interaction utility • Interaction Timeline • User compare report Auto-generated every hour.

A red-hot dispute about article Pahonia was recently solved at Talk:Pahonia (closing statement by an admin) with a decision that it should be a redirect page to article Coat of arms of Lithuania, however user Kazimier Lachnovič aggressively refused to accept the legitimate Consensus and began edit warring with reverts (1, 2, 3) and complaining at Jc37's talk page that the RFC closure was illegal (1, 2). Consequently, I created a report at Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement about Lachnovič's disruptive actions. Following it, he stopped edit warring with his primary account, however...

Soon afterwards, random newly created users (Nickitki, VikiVeki, Mkurski) began attacking the Coat of arms of Lithuania article, accusing the Lithuanians about xenophobia in the edit summaries, etc. One of them (VikiVeki) even left a message at my talk page (THIS) with which he accused me of "Anti-Belarusian Chauvinism" and stated that "You will lose this battle". Moreover, user Mkurski recently created a draft and attempted to restore article Pahonia with a different name (see: Draft:Pahonia coat of arms of Belarus; now already deleted by El C following my complain). Also, one of the sockpuppet accounts VikiVeki left a message in one of his edit summaries that "Pahonia article must be restored. And it WILL be restored." (1), so connection between this statement and actions of Mkurski is absolutely obvious.

Geographic location of IP 46.216.19.226 is Minsk, Belarus and according to Kazimier Lachnovič's user page he is from Minsk, Belarus (see here). So he obviously used his smartphone to perform these disruptive edits (Wiki system marked that all these were mobile-edits). Another IP 178.174.161.19 geographic location is Stockholm, Sweden, but the edit trend and timing was the same, so he certainly used VPN or some kind of Proxy server to perform this edit.

When a discussion about merging article Pahonia into article Coat of arms of Lithuania was started, user Kazimier Lachnovič began this discussion with humiliating statements towards the Lithuanians by calling them as "chauvinistic rubbish" (1, 2, 3). Pay attention that one of these sockpuppets (VikiVeki) also accused me of "anti-Belarusian chauvinism" at my talk page (HERE).

Sockpuppet account Mkurski inserted link to a newly created draft Draft:Pahonia coat of arms of Belarus (1) in a disambiguation page Pogonia. Just a few edits previously, Kazimier Lachnovič attempted to strengthen the Pahonia positions in it as well (2). It is clearly not a coincidence when even a disambiguation page is targeted by a sockpuppet account.

It is also worth noting that Kazimier Lachnovič performed an intensive edit warring from 3 April 2021 at article Pahonia with claims that it is an exclusively Belarusian symbol (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). However, the truth is that it is a Lithuanian coat of arms since the early 15th century and in the past Belarus was part of Lithuania (Encyclopedia Britannica article), thus the Belarusians had no national symbols (Encyclopedia Britannica article) and no their own state until 1918 (Encyclopedia Britannica article).

Furthermore, Kazimier Lachnovič was warned that he is a full-time edit warrior already in 2010, and was even blocked for edit warring in article related with the Lithuanian language (blocking message by an administrator ; report). Now he inserted the same statements which attempted to discredit the Lithuanian language using his sockpuppet account Mkurski, see this line: "The third statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1588), which, like the other two statutes, is written in Old Belarusian("Lithuanian language")." (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Here is one of the examples from 2010 when he attempted to insert such nationalistic lie with his primary account: 6. Administrators should be able to find more identical behavior here: Lithuanian language (disambiguation) as Kazimier Lachnovič was blocked for edit warring in it. So he did not learned this lesson after these 10 years. For his disruptive behavior, Kazimier Lachnovič received discretionary sanctions alerts by two administrators already (firstly by Barkeep49, then by Ymblanter). Moreover, Kazimier Lachnovič was blocked multiple times in the Lithuanian Wikipedia for his disruptive behavior (see: Lachnovič's blocking history).

All these three sockpuppet accounts (Nickitki, VikiVeki, Mkurski) were already blocked by an administrator El C recently, however there will likely be more of them in the future and the primary account of this disruptive user should also receive sanctions for using sock puppetry.

Seeing that these newly created sockpuppet accounts were using the same false accusations (e.g. chauvinism, xenophobia), claimed that Pahonia (one of the historical names of the Coat of arms of Lithuania) is a Belarusian symbol and attempted to restore article Pahonia with a different name (Pahonia coat of arms of Belarus), it is clear that all these sockpuppets are operated by the same disruptive user which demonstrates an enormous nationalistic hatred towards the Lithuanians – Kazimier Lachnovič. It is obvious that this nationalist's only mission here is to spread national hatred, false information and he is extremely stubborn. Short-term blocks did not stopped this highly disruptive user and he is currently using sock puppetry via VPN. However, at the same time he continues to write baseless complains using his primary account at the administrators noticeboard with absurd accusations and still attempts to impose his nationalistic lie that Lithuania is not Lithuania (1, 2), which was also denied at the same RFC of Pahonia (e.g. see this quote "Lithuanians are an Indo-European people belonging to the Baltic group. They are the only branch within the group that managed to create a state entity in premodern times" from Encyclopedia Britannica article). Pay attention that in the first edit (1) he complains about the increased protection of article Pahonia (extendedconfirmed-level), which prevents his newly created sockpuppet accounts to restore this article and he do not dare to continue edit warring with his primary account following a report at WP:AE. Not surprisingly, he is planning to restore this article with a similar name Pahonia coat of arms of Belarus by using a sockpuppet account, which once more proves who is hiding behind these disruptive sockpuppet accounts. -- Po  fk  a  (talk) 14:36, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Comments by other users
''Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.''

One more sock puppet was caught: Gedzimin
One more sock puppet was recently caught and blocked:. He created Draft:Pahonia(emblem), thus it is the same as Draft:Pahonia coat of arms of Belarus, which was previously created by Mkurski. This sock puppet clearly was operated by the same disruptive user. -- Po  fk  a  (talk) 20:14, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - ah yes, ethnonationalist topic areas, my favorite. All of the suspected socks are blocked, but I'm not sure whether these are Kazimier operating multiple accounts or just one of those pile-ons we see in these areas, requesting CU to help distinguish. Ping -- you sockblocked two of the accounts here, any thoughts you'd like to add? GeneralNotability (talk) 02:09, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * GN, honestly, no idea. El_C 02:11, 22 August 2021 (UTC)


 * with respect to Kazimier Lachnovič: that account appears to be a fairly longstanding account, with more than 281,000 edits across all Wikimedia projects, as well as bureaucrat/sysop rights on be-tarask.wiki. Some of the behavioral issues described above appear to be ancient history, such as the block from more than 10 years ago. While Kazimier Lachnovič does appear to be engaged in content disputes in the same topic areas as the SPAs, it is also true that this particular topic area is inherently controversial and can attract like-minded individuals that may appear similar behaviorally but are actually unrelated. I decided to run checks on the SPAs above. VikiVeki and Gedzimin are the only two that are to each other. The other two (Nickitki and Mkurski) are ❌. Since VikiVeki and Gedzimin are both already blocked, I am closing this SPI case without further action. Mz7 (talk) 05:41, 8 September 2021 (UTC)