Imagine waking up in Warsaw, pouring a coffee, and scrolling through your phone. One headline says Polish soldiers are abandoning their posts on the Belarusian border. Another claims Ukrainian refugees are receiving thousands of złoty more in benefits than Polish pensioners. A third insists NATO is about to abandon Poland. None of it is true, but it all looks plausible, and it all came from Russian-language sources, repackaged into Polish by anonymous accounts. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. It is exactly the kind of information warfare that Polish authorities say they are now confronting. TVP World reports that Poland has opened official probes into waves of disinformation, while officials issue increasingly urgent warnings that Russia is exploiting these moments to tear the country apart from the inside. The language is no longer diplomatic. It is the language of people who feel they are fighting a shadow war, a war whose front line is not in the trenches of Ukraine but in the newsfeeds, group chats, and comment sections of every Polish household.
At its core, the current investigation is about mapping the machinery behind a flood of false and misleading content that has swept across Polish social media over the past year. Polish security services, prosecutors, and digital affairs experts are examining coordinated networks of fake accounts, anonymous Telegram channels, and seemingly authentic websites that publish inflammatory stories. The pattern is unmistakable: a suspiciously Russian idea appears first on an obscure pro-Kremlin outlet, then gets picked up by bots, then is amplified by influencers and even some unwitting Polish politicians, and finally lands in the mainstream conversation as a “controversial question.” Officials have warned that this is not random chaos. It is organized, well-funded, and carefully designed to inflame every fracture in Polish society. The probes are trying to trace who is behind these networks, how they are financed, and what they hope to achieve. But as investigators dig, they are discovering something more unsettling: much of the disinformation is not simply fake news in the old sense. It is a sophisticated hybrid operation that blends lies with half-truths, real events stripped of context, and fabricated quotes attributed to actual public figures. It plays on the genuine anxieties of ordinary people—about war, inflation, migration, and insecurity—and twists them into anger, distrust, and despair.
The Russian playbook, as experts describe it, is not a new invention. It is an updated version of Cold War “active measures,” but supercharged by digital technology and the chaotic ecology of social media. The goal is not necessarily to convince Poles that Russia is right. That would be far too difficult, given the historical memory of Soviet oppression and the brutality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead, the goal is to create confusion, to erode trust in Polish institutions, and to make people feel that everything is hopeless and that nothing can be believed. This is the old tactic of reflexive control: getting an opponent to make decisions that serve your interests, not by forcing them, but by shaping the information environment until they choose what you want. In Poland, that has meant amplifying disputes over agricultural imports from Ukraine, accusing Polish leaders of dragging the country into a broader NATO-Russia war, spreading panic about grain prices, and stoking resentment toward Ukrainian refugees who have been so generously welcomed—but who also face exhaustion in a society already strained by years of crisis. Officials warn that these divisions, if left to fester, could weaken Poland’s ability to respond to external threats and destabilize the country just as it plays a critical role in supplying weapons and humanitarian aid to Kyiv.
Why now? The timing is not accidental. Poland has become one of the most important transit hubs for Western military assistance to Ukraine. It hosts NATO assets, shares a long border with Belarus, and has dealt with hybrid attacks directly, including organized groups of migrants pushed across the border by Belarusian forces, a move widely seen as a Kremlin-sponsored attempt to destabilize the region. All of this makes Poland a prime target for Russian state-sponsored disinformation. The war in Ukraine has reached a delicate phase, and Moscow has a strategic interest in fracturing Western unity, undermining public support for arming Kyiv, and distracting Poland from its role as a logistics base. Disinformation about the war, about refugees, about the Polish government’s relationship with Brussels, and even about elections and the rule of law, all serve that strategic purpose. Polish officials have also noted that the intensity of these operations spikes during moments of real-world crisis—after missile incidents near the Polish border, during farmers’ protests, before elections, and whenever economic tensions rise. The goal, they say, is to push a stressed society into a nervous breakdown, to create the impression that the Polish state is weak, divided, and incapable of protecting its people. And the most insidious part is that the attackers don’t need to win the argument. They only need to make enough noise that the truth becomes hard to see.
Polish officials have spoken with unusual bluntness and urgency in recent days. They have publicly acknowledged that the threat is not abstract but present. In television addresses and official statements, they have urged citizens to check sources, to be wary of shocking headlines, and to report suspicious accounts. They have also stressed that disinformation on social media is a national security issue, not merely a matter of public relations. The fact that Poland is probing this now is a signal—both to Russian operatives and to the Polish public—that the state is fully aware of the tactic and is actively fighting back. But officials are also careful not to overreact in ways that could play into the Kremlin’s narrative. Poland is a democracy, and the response must respect free speech and the open internet while still identifying and neutralizing hostile actors. Some observers have called for stronger platforms, greater transparency in political advertising, and better digital education. Others warn that panic can lead to censorship-like excesses. It is a tightrope. What is clear is that Poland’s officials have concluded that the disinformation campaign is not a nuisance. It is a direct threat to public safety, to Poland’s ability to govern itself, and to the resilience of a society that has been under tremendous pressure since the migration crisis and the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine.
So where does this leave ordinary Poles—or, for that matter, anyone living inside a modern information environment? For one, it is a reminder that the ancient saying is more true than ever: believe nothing, and even the truth becomes a casualty. The disinformation war is ultimately a battle for the human mind, and the weapons are not bullets but doubts. That is why Polish officials have coupled their investigation with a plea for citizens to become more resilient, more critical, and more responsible digital consumers. They are not asking people to abandon social media or to distrust the news wholesale. They are asking them to pause before sharing a shocking headline, to wonder who benefits from their anger, to seek out credible sources, and to remember that among the noise, there is still a shared reality we must preserve. It is a difficult ask, because the digital world prizes speed, emotion, and outrage. Yet Poland has survived more than two centuries of foreign interference, partition, occupation, and communist propaganda. It has a deep memory of what censorship, lies, and manipulation truly mean. That memory is perhaps the greatest defense. The investigations currently underway are important, and the warnings from officials are vital. But in the end, the real answer to Moscow’s shadow war is not just better cyber defenses or more government oversight. It is human trust, the willingness to look another person in the eye and speak honestly, and the quiet, stubborn courage to choose clarity over confusion. TVP World’s report is more than a news item; it is a call to every Pole to recognize that the front line is in their own hands—and that the most humane, most patriotic act in the age of disinformation is to think before you share.