There is a kind of warfare that leaves no visible craters on the ground, yet it can change the minds of millions and tear apart alliances that took decades to build. That is the quiet battle now unfolding in Eastern Europe, according to Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, an agency working under the National Security and Defense Council. In a recent report, the center warned that Russian information operations are actively trying to ignite anti-Ukrainian sentiment and push Poland and Ukraine into a state of open hostility. The main instrument in this effort, the center said, is a network called Pravda, sometimes known as Portal Kombat, which has been distributing destructive narratives across Poland’s information space. This is not simply a matter of angry tweets or random internet comments. The CCD describes a coordinated campaign designed to look organic, to feel like something growing naturally from the people, when in fact it is being planted and watered by Russian operatives. The timing is especially sensitive, because Poland’s Independence Day is celebrated on November 11, a moment when national pride is high and memories of foreign domination are particularly sharp. The Russian state understands that pride and memory can be twisted. If people are led to believe that an old friend is now an enemy, the resulting bitterness can become more powerful than any external attack.
What exactly are these hostile messages saying? According to the CCD, the main storylines revolve around the collapse of Polish-Ukrainian friendship, a supposed rise in xenophobic feelings among Poles, and an idea that Polish society is simply tired of Ukraine, tired of the war, tired of the refugees, tired of the endless requests for help. On the surface, these narratives may seem plausible to someone who has not followed the situation closely. Poland has indeed absorbed a huge number of Ukrainian refugees. Polish cities and towns have carried real burdens, and ordinary people at times experience fatigue, worry, and frustration. But the CCD warns that Russian media are taking those small grains of truth and stretching them into a grotesque caricature, one where every Ukrainian is ungrateful and every Pole is hateful. This is a classic manipulation technique. It takes real stress, amplifies it, strips away context, and feeds it back to a population during moments of emotional vulnerability. The message is designed to convince Poles that their generosity was foolish, and to convince Ukrainians that their neighbors are secretly despising them. In reality, polls continue to show broad support in Poland for Ukrainian sovereignty, and countless Polish families have opened their homes in unprecedented acts of kindness. Yet a single inflammatory story can linger in the mind longer than a hundred quiet good deeds.
Why would Moscow put so much effort into driving these two nations apart? The answer is obvious if you consider the bigger picture. Ukraine’s ability to resist Russia depends heavily on the unity of the West, and Poland is one of its most important frontiers. If Poland and Ukraine are seen as enemies when they should be allies, then the whole international coalition begins to wobble. The CCD described this as a systematic Russian tactic: manufacture the impression of deep hostility between partners in order to weaken international support for Ukraine and divide European unity. It is a classic wedge strategy. You find the cracks in an alliance, you make them seem wider than they are, and then you let the target countries do the rest of the work. Russia has used this playbook before, not only in this war but in earlier conflicts and political crises. With the Soviet past, with the Balkan wars, with election interference in many democratic states, the pattern repeats. The goal is never to create a perfect lie; it is to create enough doubt that people stop believing in the truth. Once trust breaks, the real work of diplomacy becomes impossible. The Kremlin understands that it cannot defeat NATO on the battlefield, so it tries to defeat NATO around the conference table, by making Europeans doubt one another.
The deeper tragedy is that Poland and Ukraine have a history full of both pain and tenderness. There are old wounds, family memories, and ancestral grudges that Russia has always found useful. But there is also an understanding that independence is not simply a word on a holiday banner. For Poles, independence is a living memory of survival after partitions, after occupation, after decades of erased borders. For Ukrainians, independence is something that is being paid for every day with blood. When November 11 comes, Polish streets fill with flags, but in Ukrainian cities, hope often feels more like a prayer than a celebration. Russia wants to turn that date into a demonstration of division. It wants to make Ukraine look like a burden and Poland look like a traitor to the cause of freedom. The CCD’s warning is especially powerful because it reminds us that information attacks do not respect national holidays or anniversaries; they actively exploit them. The date becomes a backdrop for psychological operations. The enemy is not only in the trenches, but also in the headlines, in the online comment sections, in the distorted translations of a local politician’s speech, and in the half-truths that are repeated enough times to feel like common knowledge.
Poland itself has not been blind to this threat. In a separate development reported by Ukrinform, Poland’s Foreign Ministry called Russian threats against NATO part of the Kremlin’s hybrid campaign. This is an important framing, because for many ordinary people, the word “threat” evokes tanks and missiles. But a hybrid campaign is much broader. It includes military exercises near the border, cyberattacks on infrastructure, energy blackmail, economic sabotage, and the constant stream of disinformation that we are talking about. The Polish ministry’s decision to publicly state that Russia’s threats are part of this hybrid toolkit was not just diplomatic language. It was a warning to citizens and allies not to panic, and not to fall for provocations. When Russia speaks ominously about NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, it is often trying to create the impression that any support for Ukraine brings nuclear war closer. That fear, once sown, leads politicians to hesitate and civilians to question whether their governments have chosen the wrong side. The Polish ministry understood this and pushed back, insisting that the threats themselves are a form of manipulation. In modern warfare, the first target is not the physical border but the psychological landscape. And Poland is determined to defend that landscape.
So what can ordinary people do with all this information? First, we can recognize that a headline is not always a fact. The Russian network Pravda and its related portals are trained to make lies seem reasonable. When we see stories that make Ukrainians and Poles suddenly hate each other, we should pause and ask a simple question: who benefits? The answer, almost always, is Moscow. But beyond that, we can humanize the relationship with actual empathy. The Ukrainian mother who cleans a Polish office building and sends every zloty home to her children is not a symbol of fatigue; she is a person. The Polish volunteer who buys tactical medicine for soldiers on the front line is not a xenophobe; he is a neighbor. When we reduce entire peoples to narratives, we lose sight of these faces. The CCD’s report is a reminder that information is a weapon, but it also gives us a counter-weapon: awareness. If we learn to recognize the pattern, we are less likely to fall for it. The lie is often loud and repeated, but the truth, while quiet, is richer and more consistent with what people experience in their daily relationships across the border. In the end, no algorithm can fully erase the bonds that have been forged in trauma and hope. But those bonds must be defended. Every time we choose to share a story with nuance, every time we refuse to hate our ally, every time we remember that Europe is strongest when it stands together, we are doing our part to stop the war for words before it turns into a war for good. That is the most human response of all.