The Disinformation Analysis Centre of NASK (Naukowa i Akademicka Sieć Komputerowa) said the ads promoted one candidate while disparaging rivals Rafał Trzaskowski, Karol Nawrocki and Sławomir Mentzen, a pattern analysts believe could be a “provocation” designed to hurt the very candidate they seemed to support.
The institute has asked owner Meta to block the accounts and has notified Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW).
No details yet on who paid
NASK did not name the source country or the beneficiary campaign. Poland, a key logistics hub for Western aid to Ukraine, says its elections are a prime target for Russian influence; Moscow denies meddling.
Deputy Prime Minister and Digitalization Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told reporters NASK “acted quickly” and that ABW investigators are tracing the money. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of zlotys,” he said, urging Meta to remove the ads.
Election backdrop
Poles vote on 18 May with liberal Warsaw mayor Trzaskowski leading in polls, nationalist populist Nawrocki and far‑right libertarian Mentzen competing for a place in a June 1 runoff. Support for Ukrainian war refugees and relations with the EU dominate the campaign.
How the scheme worked
- Ad spend: The suspect accounts bought geo‑targeted content across Poland, exceeding the legal disclosure threshold but listing no registered committee.
- Messaging: Posts praised one contender and pushed negative stories about the other two, often using identical graphics in Polish and machine‑translated Russian.
- Timing: The blitz began after last week’s televised debate and peaked during early‑voting sign‑ups, NASK said.
ABW is working with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre to trace payment trails, while prosecutors consider whether election‑finance laws were broken.
Meta said it had received NASK’s request and was “reviewing the accounts for policy violations.”
NASK urged social‑media users to report any political ads not clearly labelled by an official committee.
(jh)
Source: IAR, TVN24, Reuters, NASK