“Today, we find ourselves in a situation where Russia is waging an information war against us, and we are almost entirely unprotected. It is like standing on a battlefield as defenceless civilians while someone fires at us,” warns Anna Mierzyńska, an expert on disinformation.
“The government still is not doing enough to raise awareness or educate the public about disinformation. I sense that many senior politicians do not fully understand the scale of the threat. This is a weapon that cannot be seen — yet its consequences can devastate entire societies. It is like being given poison in tiny doses over a long period of time. By the time the poison has spread through the body, it is already too late to react, because the organism is deeply affected,”explains Mierzyńska, a Polish analyst and author of The Destructive Effect: How Disinformation Influences Our Lives, in an interview with sestry.eu. She spoke with journalist Natalia Żukowska.
She continues: “We will never outdo them in propaganda or disinformation. But we urgently need an effective protective shield — and it must be created as soon as possible. “Today, we find ourselves in a situation where Russia is waging an information war against us, and we are almost entirely unprotected. It is like standing on a battlefield as unarmed civilians while someone shoots at us,”
This is yet another alarming voice on the issue. Recently, Michał Fedorowicz of the analytical collective Res Futura said on TOK FM: “We do not have any effective tools that can engage in an information battle with the Russian Federation.”
The primary goal of Russian information operations in Poland is certainly not to generate sympathy for Russia. “Do not be fooled by Russian propaganda or disinformation. This is no longer like Soviet times, when they wanted us to love them and be pro-Soviet. Today, Russia has no such expectations,” stated Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. Russia’s aim is instead to undermine support for NATO, the European Union, and Ukraine.
To achieve this, various lies are spread — for example, claims that Ukrainian refugees are taking Poles’ places in hospital queues or in the job market, as well as tailored messages aimed at specific groups. One online campaign seeks to convince young Polish women that Ukrainian women are “stealing Polish men.”
“There is also a persistent narrative claiming that the Polish authorities want to drag the country into war and that ‘this is not our war.’ For many years,
Russian anti-European, anti-NATO, and broadly anti-Western narratives have circulated in Poland. All of these messages aim to discourage Poles from supporting EU and NATO membership and to push the country toward withdrawing from the European Union,” Mierzyńska says.
Who, according to her, is most vulnerable to disinformation? Mostly those who do not trust official institutions.
A significant group of those susceptible to Russian disinformation constitute people who opposed pandemic restrictions or denied the existence of COVID-19. These groups, she notes, “have been directly infiltrated by pro Russian activists.”“Today they are strongly pro-Russian, because years of these ‘small doses’ of informational poison have distorted their thinking,” Mierzyńska explains.
“We also have radical environments — both on the far right and the far left. Both are vulnerable to disinformation. However, while the radical left in Poland is relatively small and lacks substantial political or social influence, the radical right is large, increasingly visible, and holds considerable influence. Russian narratives are spread precisely by individuals associated with this far-right milieu,” the expert adds.
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