On the eve of the presidential elections in Poland, Russia has intensified the next phase of its information war against European society.
The InfoLight.UA research and analysis group has investigated the Kremlin’s main tool in this campaign, a special operation called Doppelganger. This is one of Russia’s largest and longest-running information campaigns aimed at the EU and NATO countries.
As part of this operation, the Kremlin’s intelligence services create websites and social media pages that look like real Western media. Such resources spread disinformation under the guise of real news.
To influence Polish voters, since March of this year, Russian special services have been spreading false and manipulative messages, in particular on social network X, with the active involvement of bot farms and artificial accounts imitating real voters.
The main messages used by the Kremlin criticize Poland’s support for Ukraine, call for the country’s withdrawal from the European Union, and discredit the policies of Donald Tusk’s government.
At the same time, pro-Russian media outlets are shaping a negative image of Ukraine, calling it the main factor of “chaos” in Polish politics.
Such actions of the aggressor state are part of Moscow’s broader strategy of hybrid pressure on the EU and NATO countries aimed at weakening their internal unity.
Poland’s Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said that Poland is experiencing unprecedented attempts to interfere in the presidential election by Russia.
A member of the Polish government accused Russia of trying to recruit Poles on the dark web to try to influence the presidential election campaign in Poland.
According to the Polish government, Russia is looking for Polish citizens who want to influence the campaign from inside the country, offering them 3000-4000 euros for spreading disinformation content.
The recruitment was conducted through the dark web, a part of the Internet accessible only through a specialized web browser. According to the official, Poland has been observing such attempts since the beginning of the year.
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