The Telegram channels spreading pro-Russian propaganda in Poland

In a clearing in a forest, two males stand behind a row of picket poles which have photos of faces caught on high of them.

The portraits embody US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. In entrance of them hangs the US flag.

The boys are sporting camouflage clothes with blue markings – the color usually worn by Ukrainian troopers to determine them on the battlefield.

“We do not want allies such as you,” one of many males says in Ukrainian, as he units hearth to the flag and portraits.

However this video, shared with hundreds of subscribers of a Polish-language Telegram channel, is staged. The uniforms are generic camouflage ones simply purchased on-line, whereas the Ukrainian phrases are closely mispronounced and spoken with a powerful Russian accent.

It was shared on the Telegram channel Polska Grupa Informacyjna, one among 22 Polish-language channels, with greater than 150,000 subscribers between them, that the BBC has recognized as sharing numerous types of pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda.

Telegram shouldn’t be extensively utilized in Poland, however consultants say false messages on it are amplified amongst extremist teams after which unfold on to different platforms which have a much bigger attain.

The 22 channels largely current themselves as Polish information and knowledge companies. Two declare to be “neutral” whereas one guarantees “unbiased” information. One channel payments itself as providing “dependable and verified info hidden from the general public”, whereas one other has the slogan “we’re the place the reality is required”.

Most of them often cite or replicate content material from Russian state media shops, resembling RT and Sputnik, which have been banned within the European Union for manipulating info and spreading propaganda. Poland is a member of the EU.

The channels usually quote or hyperlink to Russian regime figures and supporters. President Vladimir Putin, deputy head of the nationwide safety council Dmitry Medvedev, international ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Russian propagandist TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and pro-Russian warfare commentators often known as “Z-bloggers” are all cited.

Some posts on these channels embody outright false info. For instance, a picture posted by the channel UKR LEAKS_pl reveals figures in army clothes making use of faux blood to folks and is captioned “how the ‘Bucha victims’ had been ready”, implying that the well-documented killings of a whole bunch of Ukrainians by Russian forces in 2022 didn’t occur.

Some channels often confer with Ukrainian leaders and troopers as “Nazis”. In a single publish, InfoDefensePOLAND referred to as the federal government in Kyiv a “Nazi regime”, claiming it was “managed by america” and others within the West.

Typically a combination of true and false info is shared, or channels omit essential info to offer a deceptive impression. On 17 June, for instance, Russia carried out its deadliest assault on Kyiv in months, hitting residential buildings and, in response to Ukrainian authorities, killing at the very least 28 folks.

Greater than half of the channels fully ignored the incident, a few of them as a substitute highlighting Russian military advances in Ukraine. A number of others, echoing Kremlin narratives, blamed Ukraine for the casualties, claiming Russia’s assaults solely focused army websites.

By analysing Telegram knowledge, the BBC discovered that most of the channels emerged across the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

A minimum of three initially printed in Russian earlier than being rebranded as Polish.

The Telegram knowledge reveals that many of the 22 channels often quote, repost, or point out each other. In 2022 and 2023, this included sharing lists described as “good Polish Telegram sources” and urging followers to subscribe.

Poland has been a vital participant within the alliance of nations supporting Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, main the best way within the early months in sending army help and tools.

Anxious to keep away from turning into a goal of Russian aggression, Poland has develop into an more and more outstanding defence companion within the European Union and Nato, and has taken in about 1,000,000 Ukrainian refugees since 2022.

Since 2022, Russian disinformation and affect operations have develop into “a constant factor of the Polish digital infosphere”, says Aleksy Szymkiewicz of the Polish fact-checking organisation Demagog.

He says Telegram capabilities as a “place to begin”.

“False or manipulative claims are posted there first – then they unfold to larger platforms like X. After which from X, it is going, for instance, to discussions in Fb teams.”

In response to Mr Szymkiewicz, these pro-Russian Telegram channels intention to discourage help for Ukraine, polarise public opinion, and drive a wedge between Polish and Ukrainian societies.

Poland is now exhibiting indicators of fatigue in the direction of refugees, partly pushed by anti-Ukrainian propaganda, he says.

Among the messages circulating on the channels are overtly pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian, however others are extra delicate.

For instance, some current posts recommend that elevated army spending in EU international locations searching for to counter what they see as a risk from Russia, is driving residents – together with Poles – into poverty.

Different widespread narratives use unsubstantiated generalisations about Ukrainian refugees, portraying them as aggressive, law-breaking and a drain on host international locations.

Mr Szymkiewicz says messages like these “play on actual fears” by tapping into current financial and cultural anxieties inside Polish society.

Filip Głowacz, a senior analyst at NASK Nationwide Analysis Institute in Warsaw, says there’s a “robust historic resentment to Russia” in Poland, which was within the Soviet sphere of affect for a number of a long time.

This may imply that “explicitly pro-Russian messages do not work”, and pro-Russian actors generally “push pro-Kremlin narratives along with far-right content material, conspiracy theories, and so forth”.

Telegram is an “ultimate platform” for this, he says, explaining it has an outsized affect amongst far-right communities and conspiracy theorists.

Whereas the identities behind most channels stay unclear, consultants say there are indicators of ties to Russia or its ally Belarus. In response to Mr Głowacz, the publishing instances of most of the channels recommend they observe a shift-based posting schedule aligned with Moscow’s working hours.

UKR LEAKS_pl is a part of the broader UKR LEAKS group – a multilingual net of Telegram channels and affiliated platforms run by Vasily Prozorov, a former officer within the Ukrainian safety service, who switched sides to collaborate with Russia.

InfoDefensePOLAND belongs to the InfoDefense group, which operates in additional than 30 languages, and is linked to Yury Podolyaka, a controversial pro-Kremlin blogger initially from Ukraine. He’s now in Russia and has been sentenced in absentia by Ukrainian courts for collaborating with Moscow.

The channel instructed the BBC it had greater than 500 volunteers world wide. “There are lots of people on this planet who help Russia. They’re serving to us. Yuri Podolyaka is one among them,” it mentioned.

One other channel, Pravda PL, is a part of the Pravda group – a big worldwide community of pro-Kremlin information web sites and social media pages.

France’s state company for tackling disinformation, Viginum, says it’s linked to a Russian IT agency primarily based in Russian-occupied Crimea.

In response to Newsguard – an organization that charges information and knowledge web sites for reliability – Pravda is spreading content material so extensively that it’s “infecting” AI chatbot responses.

Newsguard examined 10 chatbots with a pattern of false narratives shared on Pravda. It says they generally repeated or cited the disinformation, whereas at different instances questioning it.

Pravda and UKR_LEAKS didn’t reply to BBC requests for remark.

Polska Grupa Informacyjna, the channel that shared the video of the US portraits being burned, shares a combination of content material, together with some that offers a Ukrainian perspective. It instructed the BBC it was “an impartial information channel” and its “overriding precept is impartiality”, strongly rejecting claims that it promoted pro-Kremlin narratives.

It mentioned content material on the channel could also be shared “for example of controversial materials circulating on the net, with none approval or evaluation from the editorial employees”. Materials could also be eliminated or corrected if it seems to be inauthentic, it added.

Mr Szymkiewicz says the unfold of pro-Russian disinformation on Telegram is regarding, because it permits content material from state-media sources resembling RT and Sputnik to stay current within the Polish-language media panorama, usually reaching a large viewers.

“Such content material is often false, manipulated, or outright fabricated,” he says.

He provides that anti-Ukrainian posts “legitimise and entrench the views and narratives of the Russian regime in Polish public discourse”.

BBC World Service is launching a brand new language service on Tuesday, BBC Information Polska. It’s the first new language service from the BBC since March 2018, bringing our neutral and trusted world journalism, together with unique reporting from throughout Europe, to the Polish-speaking viewers. It’s the first BBC language service to make use of AI translation know-how – all translation has human editorial oversight, and is clearly labelled.