Poland Warns of Russian Influence Operations Targeting Presidential Election

On 07 April 2025, the Odessa Jour­nal report­ed that Pol­ish author­i­ties have issued alerts about Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns and hybrid attacks ahead of the coun­try’s May 18 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. The arti­cle begins:

Ahead of Poland’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tions sched­uled for May 18, Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns and hybrid attacks are rais­ing increas­ing con­cerns among Pol­ish author­i­ties. Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Tomasz Semonik stat­ed that the gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to respond quick­ly to poten­tial inter­fer­ence attempts from Moscow, empha­siz­ing that the pri­ma­ry threat comes from online manip­u­la­tions aimed at under­min­ing trust in the gov­ern­ment and desta­bi­liz­ing the sit­u­a­tion with­in the coun­try, reports TWP. An illus­tra­tive exam­ple of such an attack was last year’s hack­ing of the PAP news agen­cy’s web­site, where unknown indi­vid­u­als post­ed a fake news sto­ry about the alleged dec­la­ra­tion of mobi­liza­tion and the send­ing of Pol­ish troops to Ukraine…

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Key Points

• Pol­ish intel­li­gence ser­vices have doc­u­ment­ed over 50 inci­dents linked to Russ­ian inter­fer­ence activ­i­ties tar­get­ing the country.
• Russ­ian oper­a­tions report­ed­ly aim to cre­ate ten­sions between Pol­ish cit­i­zens and Ukrain­ian refugees liv­ing in Poland.
• Min­is­ter Semonik warned that Moscow may esca­late to sab­o­tage and sub­ver­sion, cit­ing a recent War­saw shop­ping cen­ter fire.
• Poland views the migrant sit­u­a­tion on the Belarus bor­der as part of Rus­si­a’s hybrid cam­paign to pres­sure the EU and cre­ate instability.

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