Aleksandra Wójtowicz, a PISM researcher, said that two fresh reports by watchdog Alliance4Europe showed how sanctioned Belarusian state broadcaster Radio Belarus and Russia’s long-running Operation Doppelganger combined covertly to shape online debate ahead of the May 18 first-round vote.
The study found that Polish-language accounts linked to Radio Belarus remained active on TikTok, YouTube, X and Facebook despite EU sanctions, generating millions of impressions by reposting short videos that questioned the legitimacy of Poland’s electoral institutions and amplified fringe candidates.
"These accounts disappeared and reappeared under new names each time a platform took them down," Wójtowicz told Poland's PAP news agency.
"It was a deliberate, labor-intensive strategy to reach ever-wider audiences," she said, adding that comments were bulk-posted to create an illusion of mass support.
‘Doppelganger’ bots flood X with anti-EU posts
A second report traced at least 321 Polish-language tweets from the Kremlin-backed Doppelganger network between April 11 and May 21.
Botnets altered a single letter in media outlet names or hijacked verified articles, sandwiching them between false claims that Ukrainians were "Nazis" and that EU aid was bankrupting Poland.
The posts were viewed an estimated 1.2 million times and retweeted over 271,000 times, according to the report's findings.
Both operations, the report said, framed Russia as the sole guarantor of "peace and prosperity” and portrayed any alternative end to the war in Ukraine as unrealistic or dangerous.
The influence campaigns did not stop on polling day; anti-EU and pro-Russian posts persisted for at least 48 hours, raising fears they could be used to question president-elect Karol Nawrocki’s narrow victory.
PISM is preparing follow-up studies to assess the long-term threat, Wójtowicz said.
Watchdogs flag systemic weaknesses
An election-monitoring mission from the OSCE and the Council of Europe last month warned that opaque online-campaign financing and poor inter-agency coordination hampered Poland’s ability to counter disinformation.
"Responses were fragmented; one institution often didn’t know what the other was doing," Wójtowicz said.
"We need a joint plan and a rapid information-sharing mechanism," she added.
(jh/gs)
Source: PAP, Alliance4Europe, OSCE