Russia Exploits WWII Massacre Dispute to Drive Wedge Between Poland and Ukraine, Officials Say
Russia has significantly stepped up its online disinformation campaign in Poland, using a bitter historical dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv over World War Two massacres to inflame tensions between Ukraine and one of its most important allies, Polish officials and researchers say. The messaging, most of it posted in Polish-language accounts on social media platforms, is also designed to stoke public anger against Ukrainian refugees, according to officials and analysts tracking the campaign. This intensified information warfare is unfolding as opinion polls show support for far-right parties growing ahead of closely contested parliamentary elections in 2027, raising concerns in Brussels and NATO capitals that Russia is seeking to weaken the Western coalition supporting Ukraine. At the centre of the Kremlin’s latest effort is the long-running Volhynia massacre dispute, in which Poland maintains that Ukrainian insurgents killed around 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945, while thousands of Ukrainians died in reprisal killings. Polish Deputy Digital Minister Pawel Olszewski told Reuters that the dispute had seen Russian disinformation “explode” across social media and official Russian platforms, including Telegram, in posts later repeated by Polish outlets. Moscow denies spreading disinformation, saying Western leaders are intentionally exaggerating the threat from Russia for their own political ends. Yet the scale and coordination of the online activity documented by Polish researchers suggest a deliberate strategy to turn a painful historical memory into a live political weapon, with potentially profound consequences for Poland’s continued support for Ukraine in the war against Russia, for the unity of NATO’s eastern flank, and for the political future of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European government. The campaign is especially dangerous, experts say, because it is not built on false claims but on the amplification of real historical grievances, making it far harder to identify and counter than conventional fake news.
The Volhynia massacres form one of the most tragic and contested chapters in Polish-Ukrainian history, and they have haunted bilateral relations for more than eight decades. The killings took place in Volhynia and neighbouring Galicia, then part of German-occupied Poland, as Ukrainian nationalist insurgents seeking an independent, ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian state turned on Polish civilian populations. Polish historians say the result was a concerted campaign of terror in which around 100,000 Poles were murdered, often with extraordinary brutality, in what many scholars describe as ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Ukrainians died in Polish reprisals, and the two nations have been arguing ever since over how to remember the dead, who was responsible, and whether the events should be classified as genocide. For many Poles, the memory remains visceral, kept alive by memorials, school textbooks, and the demands of veteran organisations. The dispute intensified sharply in June when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named an army unit after insurgents who had perpetrated the massacres, a move interpreted in Warsaw as a deliberate provocation. The decision prompted hard-right Polish President Karol Nawrocki to strip his Ukrainian counterpart of a top Polish honour, an extraordinary rebuke that quickly became front-page news in both countries and generated an immense wave of online commentary. The controversy was already sensitive because of long-running Polish frustrations over what many Poles see as Kyiv’s reluctance to acknowledge the atrocities, allow exhumations of Polish victims, or apologise in terms that satisfy historical memory. The naming of the army unit and Nawrocki’s response created an opening for external actors, and the evidence gathered by Polish institutions shows that Russian online networks moved quickly to exploit that opening, turning a diplomatic incident into a seemingly organic eruption of anti-Ukrainian feeling among ordinary Polish social media users.
The scale of the Russian influence operation has been documented in detail by the state-backed Polish Institute of International Affairs, which carried out a systematic analysis of Polish-language content on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms. The institute found that online anti-Ukrainian content increased by more than 250 percent following Zelenskiy’s naming of the army unit, a spike that far exceeded what would normally follow a political controversy. Filip Bryjka, an analyst at PISM, said much of the increase appeared to be artificially generated through bot activity, designed to create the impression of rapidly growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment. These bot accounts, he said, were used to flood comment sections, share inflammatory posts, amplify hashtags, and push the story to the top of trending lists, making it appear that ordinary Poles were furious about the historical dispute. Deputy Digital Minister Olszewski told Reuters that the Russian campaign had “exploded” across social and official Russian media platforms, including Telegram, and that Russian messages were later repeated by Polish outlets, blurring the line between foreign propaganda and domestic political debate. What made the operation particularly effective, analysts said, was that the messaging focused largely on amplifying the controversy rather than disseminating outright false information. This may represent a new Russian disinformation tactic: instead of inventing stories that can be debunked, Moscow’s operatives identify genuine points of friction in a target country and then work diligently to magnify them, sharpen the language around them, and encourage angry reactions. The underlying facts are often real, which makes the content more persuasive to ordinary readers and harder for fact-checkers and platform moderators to identify as foreign interference. A reader may encounter a post that quotes a real statement by a Ukrainian official, cites a real historical event, and then adds an interpretation that fosters suspicion and hostility, making it almost impossible to separate authentic Polish anger from artificially amplified resentment.
Russian diplomats have categorically rejected the allegations, and the Russian embassy in Warsaw issued a statement saying, “The Russian Federation does not interfere in the relations between other states,” while adding that accusations about Russia spreading disinformation to undermine support for Ukraine are baseless. Polish researchers, however, see the Russian response as part of the familiar pattern of denial that accompanies hybrid warfare. Wojciech Pokora, an analyst at the Info Ops Poland Foundation, an independent research project, said the key characteristic of the current campaign is that it exploits the ambiguity between truth and falsehood. “The event is real, but the interpretation is imposed by an external actor,” Pokora said. This approach makes it much harder to counter than conventional disinformation through fake news, because Polish institutions and media cannot simply say that the story is untrue. The Volhynia massacres did happen, the army unit was named, and the Polish president did revoke the honour. What the Russian campaign seeks to do is to project a particular interpretation of those events, one that frames Ukraine as irredeemably hostile to Poland, that suggests Ukrainians are ungrateful for Polish help, and that implies Poland’s continued support for Ukraine is against its own national interest. According to analysts, this is an effort to exploit and exacerbate deep emotions in Polish society, including grief, anger, and a sense of historical injustice. It is also designed to undermine trust in political leaders, media institutions, and the Western alliance, all of which are seen in Moscow as obstacles to Russian influence. The campaign is thus part of a broader Russian strategy to weaken NATO’s eastern flank, erode European unity, and reduce support for Ukraine at a time when Western military assistance is critical to Kyiv’s ability to defend itself.
Polish public opinion is already shifting in ways that are concerning for Ukraine’s supporters. An IBRiS poll published early last month found that 33.6 percent of respondents said their attitude towards Ukrainians had worsened following the dispute linked to World War Two. A separate IBRiS survey published last month found that support for continued military assistance to Ukraine had fallen to 52 percent, down sharply from 78 percent in 2022, in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Experts caution that negative sentiment towards Ukraine cannot be explained solely by foreign influence. Poland has absorbed an estimated 1.8 to 1.9 million Ukrainian migrants since the start of the war, the largest such influx in Europe, and the strain on housing, healthcare, schools, and social services has generated genuine frustration among some Poles. There have also been bitter disputes over grain imports, with Polish farmers blockading border crossings to protest Ukrainian agricultural products that they said were driving down prices. The historical legacy of the Volhynia massacres continues to shape perceptions, particularly among older and more conservative voters. All of these factors, analysts say, have created what Deputy Digital Minister Olszewski called “fertile ground” for Russian disinformation to take root. The flood of Russian messages about the Ukrainian army unit and the Polish president’s response has fallen on this ground and accelerated a process that was already underway. In recent months, Ukrainians living in Poland have faced mounting hostility, including verbal abuse, vandalism, and physical attacks. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has generally supported Ukraine and warned against xenophobia, felt compelled to call for an end to xenophobic attacks in response to the incidents. The combination of genuine pressure and deliberate online amplification is creating a volatile atmosphere in which every new controversy between Warsaw and Kyiv risks exploding into a much larger crisis, with real consequences for the one million or more Ukrainians who have made Poland their temporary home and for the cohesion of the Western alliance.
The political implications of this disinformation campaign extend far beyond bilateral relations between Poland and Ukraine, because they could directly shape the outcome of Poland’s next parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2027. Pollsters say that policy towards Ukrainians is likely to become a key election theme, and current polling suggests that Tusk’s pro-European government may struggle to retain power. The rise of far-right parties, which has been partly fuelled by anti-migrant sentiment, adds another layer of risk, because these parties are traditionally more sceptical of aid to Ukraine and more sympathetic to Moscow’s narrative. Russian influence operations are not designed to win votes for any particular political party, analysts say, but rather to increase polarisation and undermine trust in democratic institutions. However, the practical effect of the campaign may be to strengthen the far right and weaken Tusk’s coalition, which would in turn affect Poland’s future role in NATO and the European Union. Poland is one of Ukraine’s most important military backers, serving as a transit hub for Western weapons and a diplomatic advocate for Kyiv’s membership in NATO and the EU. A significant shift in Polish public opinion away from Ukraine could make it harder for any Polish government, regardless of its composition, to maintain current levels of assistance. Russian strategists are well aware of this, and they have shown increasing sophistication in their ability to identify and exploit the vulnerabilities of Western societies. The campaign around the Volhynia massacres is particularly insidious because it uses a genuine historical tragedy as a tool of modern warfare, turning the memory of thousands of dead Poles into ammunition in an information war that most Poles do not even recognise is being fought. For policymakers and citizens, the lesson is that traditional fact-checking is no longer enough; they must also be alert to the quieter, more dangerous technique of amplifying real grievances in order to transform them into forces for division and conflict. Unless that challenge is met, Russia may succeed in achieving what its military has not: the gradual erosion of the Western unity that has sustained Ukraine in its fight for survival.
