Służby specjalne

The following are the main weaponized narratives used against the interests of Poland in 2020.

● Russia stepped up its ongoing, repeated propaganda and disinformation efforts that involve:

- smearing Warsaw on the international arena;

- undermining Poland’s relations with neighboring countries and partners;

- destabilizing Poland’s military cooperation within NATO;

- stirring up hostilities between Poland and the U.S.;

- attacking the Polish energy policy;

- ridiculing and downgrading the Polish Armed Forces;

- labelling Poland as being steeped in anti-Russian sentiment;

- blaming Poland for the decline in the relations between Russia and the West.

● On top of the narratives in “everyday use”, last year Russia heavily exploited the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic.

- The Kremlin used the global disease to force the West to condone Russia’s violence against Ukraine. Moscow spread a message that in view of COVID-19 and the resulting global recession, the West and Russia must get on with each other and resume cooperation “on normal grounds.” By this Russia meant the lifting of sanctions rightfully imposed by western countries in response to the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the occupation of Donbass that followed.

- The special services of Poland reported an increased propaganda and disinformation activity from eastern direction targeted against last year’s military drills hosted by Poland – the DEFENDER-Europe 20 (and related exercises) and TUMAK-20. Russian propaganda would suggest that the joint exercises increased the risk of contracting COVID-19 by local communities in Poland. It would go on to say that even faced with the pandemic, NATO could not help itself to provoke Russia. Western decision-makers were also accused of playing with the lives of the troops and personnel taking part in the drills. There were also attempts to depict the Polish Army as paralyzed and immobilized by the scale of the outbreak.

● As in the previous years, last year Russia also made significant efforts to falsify history with the aim to:

- whitewash its own past and make the world believe the Soviet Union had no dark sides whatsoever;

- accuse (as usual) the prewar Polish government and society of anti-Semitism and collaborationism;

- blame Poland for the outbreak of WWII;

- stigmatize the Poles as being “ungrateful” to the Red Army for having “liberated” the country from the German occupation;

- accuse the contemporary Polish society of lack of respect for the burial sites of the Soviet soldiers, and an unjustified, historically motivated hostility to Russia;

- additionally, last year Russia revived a long-unseen Soviet-era narrative according to which it was Germans who carried out the Katyn Massacre – the Soviet mass killing of 22 thousand Polish military officers and members of the country’s elite in 1940.

● Poland was also targeted by Belarusian and Russian propaganda - the regime in Minsk and the Kremlin launched a campaign aimed to smear Poland in the eyes of the Belarusians.

- both States suggested that Warsaw was inciting and controlling the opposition-led protests in Belarus that had erupted after the much-contested presidential election;

- Minsk’s and Moscow’s propaganda pushed a narrative that Poland was only waiting for a good moment to seize a part of the territory of Belarus;

These joint Russian-Belarusian information warfare efforts against Poland continue in 2021.

● In 2020, anti-vaccination and anti-5G movements redoubled their activity. Encouraged by the pandemic, they stepped up their disinformation efforts:

- “anti-vaxxers” spread a narrative that the anti-COVID-19 vaccine was more dangerous than the disease itself;

- some narratives claimed the vaccination programme served to surveil the whole societies or exterminate the entire populations of healthy subjects;

- anti-5G groups exploited the same concerns and pushed similar narratives, stressing the hazards to human life caused by this technology.

The agendas of both movements were amplified by the same entities and channels of communication that usually identify with or pick up the narratives promoted by the Kremlin.

SUMMARY:

Russian propaganda adapted its disinformation efforts to current circumstances. Therefore, 2020 was marked by the weaponization of many different narratives related to the COVID-19 crisis. The Kremlin’s information warfare also exploited lies and manipulations typically used against the West, including Poland. Moscow’s disinformation and propaganda activity is designed to achieve a long-term effect that is why the Western States should be aware that in 2021, coordinated information warfare campaigns will surely remain a challenge for them and their societies.

Spokesperson for Poland’s Minister-Special Services Coordinator