Królewiec (Kaliningrad) and Lwów (Lviv) have recently become focal points for Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns. One city is Russian, the other Ukrainian, yet the narrative pushed by Russian sources alleges that Poland has ambitions towards both.
Russian media have been spreading fear among their citizens by claiming that NATO and Poland are supposedly plotting to blockade or even seize the Kaliningrad Oblast. This particular narrative is largely aimed at a domestic audience.
However, the narrative takes on a more dangerous dimension when it extends to claims that Poland intends to annex Lviv and other western regions of Ukraine, as this particular claim is aimed at wider, international audience. In this case, the message is directed at an international audience, with the goal of undermining Ukrainians’ trust in their allies and portraying Poland — and by extension the West — as motivated by self-interest rather than solidarity with Kyiv.
This is hardly new. Russian propaganda have been repeating the same lie for years, despite the fact that none have ever materialised.
Professor Robert Kuśnierz, a Polish expert on Soviet affairs, told Polish Radio: “For example, when Russia staged its sham referendums in occupied Ukrainian territories, there were simultaneous claims that Poland was preparing a referendum on annexing Lviv. Nothing of the sort happened — it couldn’t have happened, because it was complete nonsense. Then more lies followed, such as fabricated dates for Poland’s supposed annexation of Lviv. There were at least several of these dates.” He added:
“When none of them came true, new dates were invented, and so on. For example, the Russians circulated a map showing the partition of Ukraine, claiming it had been drawn up in Poland. In reality, it was a map prepared by Zhirinovsky in 2014 and sent not only to Warsaw but also to Budapest and Bucharest.””
At one point, the Russians even forged the front page of Dziennik Wschodni, a newspaper published in Lublin, in an effort to lend credibility to their lies.
However, perhaps the most egregious example of Russian disinformation was the claim that Poland was planning to deploy 20,000 amnestied prisoners to Ukraine as mercenaries.
In March 2024, the author of a Telegram post wrote: “Warsaw’s territorial claims to the lands of Western Ukraine are no longer a secret to anyone: as soon as the opportunity arises, the Poles will immediately try to take back Lviv and other territories of the former Ukrainian SSR.”
He then continued: “It is quite possible that the amnestied criminals will not be released without a reason: perhaps they will be used as mercenaries who, before the fall of the regime in Kyiv, will cross into Western Ukraine under the guise of a private company.”
This narrative was quickly repeated by Russian media, with headlines such as “Is Poland Preparing a Criminal Landing in Lviv?”
We recently wrote about another fake from the summer of this year concerning this disinformation in the text “KillNet returns with a fake and Poland on the map of Ukraine”.
A claim appeared on the Russian Telegram channel Mash, alleging that “European countries have devised a plan to occupy Ukrainian territory — with the aim of seizing mineral deposits, logistics routes, and access to the sea. The organizer is said to be the French Armed Forces, and the goal is to recoup money given to Kiev.”
Attached to this post was a poorly fabricated map. The disinformation was quickly picked up and repeated by numerous Russian media outlets, including Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and URA.RU.
More recently, a deepfake video appeared online, shared via a Slovakian social media profile. The video showed three supposed “Polish soldiers” declaring that the time had come to seize Lviv. One of them used awkward phrasing, saying:
“Those drones were Ukrainian, and we will not be fooled, damn it. We must enter Ukraine and take back what is ours.”
Fact-checkers at demagog.org debunked the video (Poles call for the takeover of Lviv? The film was created using AI), pointing to telltale signs such as unnaturally smooth faces and lip movements that did not match the audio.
“In the bottom right corner of the video, we can see a watermark with the word ‘Veo’ — the name of the AI tool used,” demagog.org explained.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1062846632360418
By Igor Hrywna
Lviv, now part of Ukraine, for centuries belonged Poland. In 1939, the USSR seized the city along with the rest of eastern Poland. Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), located on the Baltic Sea, was for many years part of Prussia and later Germany. It was annexed by the USSR in 1945 and renamed in honor of the Soviet communist activist Mikhail Kalinin.
COMMENTS