The Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), operating under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), has publicly documented a concerted and ongoing disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting Ukrainians in Poland and inflaming interethnic tensions between the two neighboring nations. In a statement released on Thursday evening via its official Telegram channel, the CCD warned that a broad network of publications is systematically injecting manipulative and propaganda-driven articles into the Polish information space, with narratives that closely mirror the thematic priorities of Russian disinformation operations. The center’s warning arrives amid a period of deep bilateral significance, as Poland has served as one of Ukraine’s most vital allies since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, hosting millions of refugees and acting as a critical logistical hub for Western military and humanitarian aid. According to the CCD, the disinformation campaign is not casual or accidental; rather, it is a deliberate effort to transform a generally sympathetic Polish public into a hostile one, to degrade mutual trust, and to undermine the foundations of Ukrainian-Polish solidarity. The center emphasized that such campaigns are specifically designed to provoke conflict between historically connected peoples and to complicate Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russian aggression. The statement identifies a recurring pattern in which false claims are introduced, repeated, and amplified across publications, creating a synthetic impression of widespread and growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment grounded in alleged criminality and betrayal.
Among the most prominent false narratives propagated in the Polish media ecosystem, the CCD identified claims that “Ukrainians are committing crimes against Poles on a massive scale,” as well as allegations that Ukrainians are “massively establishing criminal drug-production businesses” within Polish territory. These narratives are deliberately constructed to evoke fear, moral panic, and a sense of existential threat among ordinary Polish citizens. The framing of Ukrainian refugees and labor migrants as dangerous, criminal, and parasitic elements in Polish society is a classic disinformation tactic, historically used to galvanize hostility toward minority groups and foreign nationals. The CCD’s documentation suggests that such stories are not isolated incidents but are part of a coordinated editorial pattern, with multiple publications pushing the same angles in rapid succession to reinforce a false reality. The drug-production narrative, in particular, appears engineered to exploit public anxieties about organized crime and public safety, while simultaneously associating all Ukrainians with illegal activity. By repeatedly connecting Ukrainian identity with criminality, the propagandists aim to shift Polish public perception away from empathy and solidarity toward suspicion and resentment. These claims are presented with the trappings of journalistic credibility—headlines, sources, and unverified statistics—which makes them especially insidious and difficult to debunk in real time. The CCD’s monitoring reveals that these manipulative articles are being systematically placed to appear as if they represent genuine Polish concerns, further muddying the informational waters.
The CCD also flagged the circulation of a highly charged political narrative alleging the existence of a “Ukrainian fifth column in Poland that is destroying the country from within.” This language is deliberately evocative and historically loaded, invoking fears of internal subversion, espionage, and covert enemy action. The term “fifth column” emerged during the Spanish Civil War and has since become a universal trope in propaganda to describe groups accused of working on behalf of an external adversary. By applying this label to Ukrainians in Poland, the campaign seeks to reframe legitimate refugees, workers, and diplomatic relationships as a covert threat to Polish sovereignty and national security. The disinformation campaign goes even further, weaving in a conspiratorial geographic narrative claiming that Ukraine is helping to shift “Poland’s borders to the boundaries of the Duchy of Warsaw.” This bizarre historical reference appears designed to resurrect old anxieties about Polish territorial integrity and to present Ukraine as a revisionist power seeking to manipulate European history for its own advantage. The Duchy of Warsaw, a short-lived French client state created by Napoleon in 1807 and abolished in 1815, is hardly a relevant reference to contemporary geopolitics, yet it is being used deliberately to stir historical emotions and to suggest that Ukraine harbors hidden territorial ambitions over Polish lands. By combining contemporary political anxieties with distorted historical references, the propagandists intend to create a narrative that is both emotionally convincing and difficult to counter with simple factual corrections.
The overarching purpose of this coordinated disinformation effort, according to the CCD, is threefold: to incite hatred toward Ukrainians among Poles, to provoke interethnic conflict, and to hinder the continued aid that Ukraine receives from Poland. These objectives align directly with the strategic interests of the Kremlin, which has repeatedly sought to weaken Western unity and reduce military, financial, and humanitarian support for Ukraine by driving wedges between Ukraine and its most important allies. Poland has been one of the most vocal and generous supporters of Ukraine, serving as an entry point for refugees and a staging area for military shipments. Thus, undermining Polish-Ukrainian relations is of enormous value to Russian strategists. If Polish society can be persuaded that Ukrainian refugees are dangerous criminals, ungrateful guests, or agents of a hostile foreign power, public pressure could mount on the Polish government to curtail its support, close borders, or restrict its role as a hub for Western aid. The CCD’s statement underscores that the disinformation campaign is being waged precisely to manipulate these political vulnerabilities. The claim that Ukrainians are “destroying Poland from within” is particularly dangerous because it merges resentment over economic and social pressures with a security narrative that can be used to justify drastic measures. In this way, the campaign feeds into broader European populist narratives that blame immigrants and refugees for crime, economic instability, and cultural erosion, while also serving the specific Russian objective of fracturing the Eastern European front.
The CCD’s latest warning must be understood within the broader context of Russia’s long-standing use of disinformation as an instrument of hybrid warfare against both Ukraine and the West. Since 2014, and especially since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian intelligence and information operations have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian-Polish relations. The historical relationship between the two nations is complex, marked by shared struggle, mutual cultural influence, and painful episodes of conflict and ethnic violence during the 20th century, particularly around Volhynia and the struggles of the postwar borderlands. Russian propagandists have long sought to exploit these historical wounds, amplifying them alongside contemporary grievances such as the controversy over Ukrainian grain exports that briefly strained ties between Kyiv and Warsaw in 2023. The current campaign appears to be an intensification of this pattern, using fresh stories of supposed criminal behavior and conspiratorial political plots to reignite old suspicions. Poland, which has accepted millions of Ukrainian displaced persons and has been a frontline state for NATO and EU support to Ukraine, is a prime target for such operations. If the shared public sentiment in Poland can be turned against Ukraine, the entire Western support infrastructure could suffer a significant setback. The CCD’s monitoring indicates that the campaign is not limited to crude Russian-language broadcasts, but is carefully localized, translated, and adapted for Polish-speaking audiences, with narratives tailored to Polish fears, historical sensitivities, and political debates.
In response to these findings, the CCD is urging vigilance, media literacy, and strengthened cooperation between Ukrainian and Polish institutions to counter the spread of disinformation. The center’s statement serves as an open warning to journalists, fact-checkers, and ordinary citizens to be suspicious of sensational stories that vilify entire nations based on isolated incidents or fabricated statistics. The CCD has called for continued joint efforts by Ukrainian and Polish authorities to document sources of disinformation, expose manipulative campaigns, and build resilience among the public against emotional manipulation. The ultimate goal of the campaign, as outlined by the CCD, is to destroy the foundation of trust and mutual assistance that has made the Ukrainian-Polish partnership one of the strongest pillars of support for Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression. Every false story about criminal drug networks, every allusion to a fifth column, and every absurd claim about historical borders is a deliberate attempt to move Polish public opinion from solidarity to animosity. As Ukraine continues to navigate the immense challenges of war, leadership in Kyiv recognizes that the battle against disinformation is inseparable from the battle on the battlefield. The CCD’s latest statement is therefore not merely a warning about media manipulation; it is an urgent call to defend the truth and preserve one of Ukraine’s most crucial alliances in Europe. With the Kremlin likely to intensify its efforts as the war continues, the ability of Poles and Ukrainians to recognize and reject such provocations will remain vital to the security of both nations and to the stability of the broader European order.