On the night of September 10, when Russia attacked Ukraine with drones and missiles, several unmanned aircraft entered Polish airspace. Debris from eight drones and missiles has now been found on the country’s territory. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that this was most likely a large-scale provocation by Moscow.
Meanwhile, Moscow quickly launched a disinformation campaign. As always, the propaganda began working several angles simultaneously. On one hand, Russia started denying its involvement in the attack. In particular, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Poland of “spreading myths for even greater escalation of the Ukrainian crisis.” In other words, playing innocent with “it wasn’t me, and it’s not my house.”
On the other hand, Moscow began actively promoting the narrative that the “Kyiv regime” was behind the drones entering Polish airspace. Allegedly, Ukraine is trying to drag NATO into direct military confrontation with Russia through such means. A number of talking heads joined in spreading this nonsense: State Duma deputy Sheremetyev, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, and several pseudo-experts.
Attempts to influence Polish public opinion through bot farms have also been recorded. The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security analyzed Polish social media users’ reactions to the nighttime incident and identified attempts by Russian bots to influence Polish public opinion.
Using monitoring tools, we analyzed a dataset of Polish-language publications (posts, videos, comments) on Facebook, X (Twitter), YouTube, Telegram, and TikTok platforms that mentioned the drone attack on the night of September 10. The monitoring did not include posts and comments in closed Facebook groups, Instagram, or messenger chats (WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram). Technical capabilities for TikTok monitoring are limited.
As of 4:30 PM on September 10, over 5,000 Polish-language publications mentioning the drone attack were indexed, with a total reach of approximately 30 million views.
On publicly accessible resources, approximately 450 publications (mainly comments under posts on Polish politicians’ and media pages) containing accusations against Ukraine were indexed. The recorded total reach of these publications was approximately 5.5 million views. These involved claims and/or assumptions that the drone attack on Poland was allegedly:
A Ukrainian provocation;
A Ukrainian provocation aimed at dragging Poland into war with Russia;
The result of Ukrainian air defense systems (“failed to shoot down” and “released into Poland”) and electronic warfare (using spoofing to “redirect drones to Poland”).
Importantly, in open Telegram chats of Polish-language information channels, identical comments with the message “in 2022 a Ukrainian missile flew into Poland, now it’s another provocation by Banderites” were posted. These comments were published from profiles, some of which contain clear signs of Russian origin (Russian profile names in Latin script, Russian symbols in profile photos, etc.).
The scale of this disinformation operation can be determined later. But it can already be stated with certainty that on the night of September 10, Russia carried out not only another provocation against NATO, but also continues to undermine Ukrainian-Polish partnership.
If you have found a spelling error, please, notify us by selecting that text and pressing Ctrl+Enter.
