By Anna Koper<\/p>\n
WARSAW, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Russia has significantly stepped up its online disinformation campaign in Poland, using a dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv over World War Two massacres to inflame tensions between Ukraine and its key ally, \u200cPolish officials and researchers say.<\/p>\n
The messaging, mostly posted on social media accounts in Polish, also focuses on fomenting anger in \u200cPoland against refugees, as opinion polls show support for the far-right growing ahead of closely contested parliamentary elections in 2027.<\/p>\n
The long-running World War Two dispute centres on the \u200bVolhynia massacres, in which Poland says Ukrainians killed around 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945. Thousands of Ukrainians died in reprisal killings.<\/p>\n
The dispute intensified after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named an army unit after insurgents who perpetrated the massacres, prompting hard-right President Karol Nawrocki to strip his Ukrainian counterpart of a top Polish honour in June.<\/p>\n
Polish deputy digital minister Pawel Olszewski told Reuters the dispute saw Russian disinformation “explode” across social and official Russian \u200cmedia platforms, including Telegram, in posts later repeated \u2060by Polish outlets.<\/p>\n
An analysis by the state-backed Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) found online anti-Ukrainian content in Polish on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube increased by more than 250% following Zelenskiy’s naming of the army \u2060unit.<\/p>\n
Much of the increase across those platforms and others appeared to be artificially generated through bot activity designed to create the impression of rapidly growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment, said PISM’s Filip Bryjka.<\/p>\n
The messaging focused largely on amplifying the controversy rather than disseminating false information, in what analysts said may be a \u200bnew \u200bRussian disinformation tactic.<\/p>\n
Moscow denies spreading disinformation and says Western leaders are intentionally exaggerating \u200bthe threat from Russia for their own political ends.<\/p>\n
“The \u200cRussian Federation does not interfere in the relations between other states,” the Russian embassy in Warsaw said in an emailed statement, adding that accusations about Russia spreading disinformation to undermine support for Ukraine are baseless.<\/p>\n
POLICY TOWARDS UKRAINIANS COULD INFLUENCE ELECTION<\/p>\n
Because the underlying facts are often real, analysts say such campaigns are harder to identify and counter than conventional disinformation through fake news.<\/p>\n
“The event is real, but the interpretation is imposed by an external actor,” said Wojciech Pokora, analyst at Info Ops Poland Foundation, an independent research project.<\/p>\n
Though Poland remains a staunch ally \u200cof Ukraine in its war against Russia, opinion polls show deteriorating support for \u200bUkraine. An IBRiS poll published early last month found that 33.6% of respondents \u200bsaid their attitude towards Ukrainians had worsened following the dispute \u200blinked to World War Two.<\/p>\n
A separate IBRiS survey published last month found support for continued military assistance to \u200cUkraine had fallen to 52% from 78% in 2022.<\/p>\n
Experts \u200bsay negative sentiment towards Ukraine cannot \u200bbe explained solely by foreign influence and also reflects weariness with an estimated 1.8 to 1.9 million Ukrainian migrants, disputes over grain imports and the legacy of the World War Two killings.<\/p>\n
The flood of disinformation about the dispute has “fallen on fertile ground”, \u200bthe digital ministry’s Olszewski said.<\/p>\n
Ukrainians living in Poland \u200chave faced mounting hostility in recent months, prompting Prime Minister Donald Tusk to call for an end to xenophobic \u200battacks.<\/p>\n
Pollsters say policy towards Ukrainians could be a key election theme as polling suggests Tusk’s pro-European government may struggle to \u200bretain power next year.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Anna Koper; Editing by Aidan Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Anna Koper WARSAW, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Russia has significantly stepped up its online disinformation campaign in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4904,842,9,13294,6183,126,3450,127,9327,7303,8216],"class_list":["post-21248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-disinformation","tag-pawel-olszewski","tag-poland","tag-polish-institute-of-international-affairs","tag-polish-officials","tag-russia","tag-russian-disinformation","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainians","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-world-war-two"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}