1. Imagine waking up one morning to the news that your neighbor—a close ally, a fellow member of the European Union and NATO—is quietly preparing to invade you. Not a full-scale war, but a “small” land grab, a sneaky annexation of a tiny strip of border territory that has been a point of contention for decades. That is exactly the scenario that a bizarre and elaborate disinformation campaign tried to sell to the people of the Czech Republic in recent days, specifically concerning the area around the twin towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín, a region that sits right on the Czech-Polish border. It sounds like a script from a spy thriller, complete with fake news websites, AI-generated images, and impersonated officials. But according to investigative journalist Lukas Valasek, who laid out the details in a podcast interview for Seznam Zpravy, this was no clumsy internet prank. It was, in his words, “the first ever operation of this scale”—a carefully organized, well-financed, and sophisticated campaign designed to push the lie that Poland was about to invade and annex Czech territory. The most troubling part? Valasek believes the operation may have been a test, a dry run by a potential Russian actor to see exactly how the Czech Republic would respond to a wave of coordinated disinformation. And his verdict was harsh: the Czech political scene, and especially the government, “did not quite pass.”
2. The mechanics of the campaign were as devious as they were effective, at least for a time. It wasn’t just random social media posts from angry anonymous accounts. This was a full-spectrum operation. There were paid Facebook advertisements designed to reach specific demographics in the border region, AI-generated images showing Polish tanks supposedly massing near the frontier, and a fake website that cleverly mimicked the design and branding of iRozhlas.cz, the respected news portal of Czech Radio. On top of that, the operatives created a web of fake social media profiles—some posing as ordinary citizens, others impersonating top officials, including Czechia’s own ambassador to Poland. Imagine scrolling through your feed and seeing a post from a “local resident” expressing fear that Polish troops are coming to take their home, or a “statement” from a diplomat warning citizens to prepare for the worst. It was designed to feel immediate, personal, and terrifying. The underlying thread was historical grievance: the campaign dredged up a controversial 1958 border treaty between Poland and then-Czechoslovakia, which had redrawn the boundary around Cieszyn/Těšín after decades of tension. The goal was to convince ordinary Czechs that the Poles were finally coming to “reclaim” what they believed was rightfully theirs, sparking fears of land seizures, property confiscations, and a sudden collapse of the friendly relations between the two countries. It was a masterclass in manipulation, using a fragment of real history and weaving it into a completely false, fear-driven narrative.
3. Security experts were quick to recognize the fingerprints of a familiar adversary. Bohumil Kartous, a prominent Czech security analyst, described the operation as bearing all the hallmarks of a Russian-backed hybrid attack. He pointed out that the campaign didn’t invent the border dispute out of thin air; it exploited a lingering, though relatively minor, disagreement and placed it “in a completely different context of fear over losing property.” The strategic aim, Kartous argued, was not actually to convince people that Poland was about to invade—that was always an absurd notion. The real goal was to sow discord within the pro-Ukrainian coalition, to drive a wedge between two of Ukraine’s most steadfast supporters in the European Union. If Poland and the Czech Republic could be turned against each other, if mutual trust could be poisoned, then the united front against Russian aggression would crack. The disinformation was, in essence, a targeted weapon aimed at the heart of European solidarity. And while the lie itself was outlandish, the fact that it gained enough traction to require official responses from two governments showed just how vulnerable democratic societies are to these kinds of psychological operations. The seeds of suspicion, once planted, can be incredibly hard to uproot, especially when they tap into old historical wounds and anxieties about national sovereignty.
4. The response to the campaign, however, was a study in contrasts. Poland, perhaps surprisingly, was the fastest and most decisive actor. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski both quickly dismissed the claims of imminent annexation as absurd, orchestrated, and completely out of touch with reality. Tusk even added a touch of cultural diplomacy to defuse the tension: he posted an image of friendship between the two countries’ most beloved cartoon characters—the Polish dog Reksio and the Czech mole Krtek—captioned with a simple, warm message: “Reksio and Krtek have known this for a long time, Poland and Czechia are true friends.” It was a disarming, human gesture that cut through the hysteria. But on the Czech side, the response was slower and far more muddled. It took several days for the Czech Foreign Ministry to issue an unequivocal rejection of “the spread of false information about alleged Polish territorial claims to the Czech Republic.” President Petr Pavel eventually weighed in, calling it “a targeted provocation” and expressing relief that people were not listening to it on either side of the border, while reassuring the public that Poland was one of the Czech Republic’s closest and most important partners. But the damage had been done—not by the disinformation itself, but by the Czech government’s sluggish and uncertain response. For days, citizens were left to wonder: if this is a lie, why isn’t anyone in charge telling us clearly and immediately?
5. That frustration soon turned into a political blame game. Prime Minister Andrej Babis, rather than focusing on the external threat, lashed out at his own intelligence services. He claimed he had only learned about the ongoing hoax through the media, and he pointed an accusatory finger at the Office for Foreign Relations and Information (UZSI) and at Czechia’s ambassador in Poland, Bretislav Dancak, for what he saw as a failed response. Critics, however, were quick to point out that the government had only itself to blame. Shortly after taking office, Babis’s coalition had made the controversial decision to completely scrap the Strategic Communications Department, known as Stratkom, and to reduce the number of ministerial experts dedicated to monitoring disinformation. This was, in the eyes of many analysts and opposition politicians, a catastrophic act of self-sabotage. Oldrich Bruza, the former head of Stratkom, argued that if the state’s strategic communication capacity had still existed, analysts would have caught the disinformation campaign long before it went viral, and top officials could have communicated a clear, unified response to the public. “At least we have our Polish brothers,” he added wryly, acknowledging that Poland’s swift rebuttal had helped contain the damage. Former foreign minister Jan Lipavsky was even more blunt, accusing the government of liquidating the state’s defenses against disinformation “for ideological reasons” at the very moment when those defenses were needed most. Babis, for his part, pushed back, insisting, “We don’t need a Strategic Communications Department. We have services here that are supposed to work for the state, for the people and for the interests of the state.” The finger-pointing continued, even as intelligence services in both Poland and the Czech Republic launched investigations into the origin of the operation. Notably, officials on both sides refrained from directly and unequivocally accusing Moscow, though the implication was clear to anyone paying attention.
6. In the end, the campaign largely missed its mark, and the most heartening part of the story is the response of ordinary people. While politicians argued and governments stumbled, social media in both countries was flooded with montages, memes, and illustrations of Reksio and Krtek as lifelong best friends. The cartoon dog and the little mole, both beloved cultural icons from childhood, became symbols of defiance against the disinformation. They appeared together sharing sausages, playing in the snow, and waving both Polish and Czech flags. It was a spontaneous, organic, and deeply human rejection of the narrative that these two nations, bound by shared history, geography, and friendship, could ever be tricked into hating each other. The people, it seemed, passed the test that their governments had failed. They saw through the AI-generated images and the fake news websites, and they responded not with anger, but with humor and solidarity. The incident served as a stark warning about the evolving nature of hybrid warfare—where the battlefield is not physical territory but the minds of citizens, and where the weapons are not tanks but tweets, ads, and cleverly forged articles. It also highlighted a dangerous vulnerability: when governments dismantle their defenses against such attacks, they leave their populations exposed to manipulation. But it also proved that resilience cannot be entirely legislated away. The bonds between neighbors, built on trust, culture, and simple human decency, are far harder to break than any treaty or alliance. Reksio and Krtek, it turns out, are mightier than any disinformation campaign.