Analysis

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  Soviets killed Polish officers in Katyn

  There is not the slightest doubt that the Katyn massacre was committed by the Soviets and not by the German Nazis. In 1990, the Russians themselves acknowledged their responsibility for the series of mass murders of Polish officers. Unfortunately, currently, Russian propaganda has attempted to question the existing findings and to relativise the crime by using testimonies of German war criminals which are completely unreliable as they were forced by torture and fabricated by the Soviet secret police agency (NKVD).

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  German concentration camps

  For years, Polish diplomacy has intervened against the use of the phrase "Polish extermination camps" as all of them were established by the Germans after their occupation of Poland begun in 1939. According to a report by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 2009 alone, the phrase "Polish concentration camps" was used by foreign media 103 times. The term appeared most frequently in Germany—as many as 20 times. The FakeHunter website fact-checked several stories published on social media that spread fake news concerning German concentration camps.

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  The Volhynia Massacre

  The Ukrainian Insurgent Army started the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in February 1943. The ethnic cleansing was an attempt to prevent the post-war Polish state taking over Ukrainian-majority areas that had been part of the pre-war Polish state.The Volhynia massacre had its apogee in July 1943 but mass murders of Poles living in the area had begun several months earlier. The decision to carry out an anti-Polish purge in Volhynia was taken by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), supported by local Ukrainians, in early 1943 and was influenced by events on the eastern front of the Second World War.

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  Sun Zi in the shadow of Bucha

  We hope that this report will contribute not only to reducing the effectiveness of Russian disinformation but also disinformation in general. It is worth mentioning that most of the methods used in the Russian disinformation campaign are commonly used as manipulation, so this report and its conclusions should generally raise awareness to the presence and range of disinformation in the public space.The Russians are distinguished by the great importance they attach to the field of information warfare. This is deeply rooted in their political tradition.

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  Fake news, biometrics and blackout - Iran's disinformation tools

  Despite the scale of terror, most of the world does not know much about the situation in Iran, because its government tightly restricts access to information, by using propaganda tools and fake news, and by controlling access to the internet. The problem concerns not only Iran, but also the armed conflict on the European continent. This is because Tehran's actions may be a model for Moscow and the subject of the already existing exchange of know-how with Russia.

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  Revisions of European frontiers – the Kremlin’s propaganda bogeyman

  In view of the prolonged invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is employing all possible means to discourage the West from supporting Kyiv and force Ukraine to surrender. For this purpose, the Kremlin’s propagandists are trying to intimidate the societies and elites of the Western countries, among others, with warnings about supposed plans to revise state frontiers in Europe. In this context, Putin’s propagandists have also prepared a narrative concerning Poland’s imperial ambitions and plans to seize control of western Ukraine.

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  "They behave as if it was their territory" - the perception of the Polish people in Russian propaganda

  The Russian Investigative Committee has promised to focus on the question of alleged war crimes committed by Polish mercenaries. But Russian media also speak about "good Polish people." These are pro-Russian analysts. Poles are also said to be getting ready to "conquer Lviv" and that they "will freeze to death."In general, information about Poland and the Polish people in Russian mass media have been "centralised" in state information agencies, and later quoted "word for word" by dozens of small portals

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  Fake news concerning reports on mercury in the River Odra

  For several days after August 11, false information was circulated in the Polish media about an unusually high mercury level in the waters of the River Odra which had apparently caused the death of masses of fish. The fake news about life-threatening mercury in the water was based on information from a single news source in Brandenburg that was published before any official research had been presented in Poland and Germany, and is an incident can certainly serve as a case study for how fake news is spread. The fake news, also picked up by Russian and Belarusian media, spread very quickly and caused much public panic.

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  Orlen caught in Moscow’s crosshairs

  The Polish fuel market is very sensitive to 'information war' activities, such as fake news, for several reasons, the main one being that it is part of the energy sector - a critical element of any economy. That is why it is often the first target of attack and actions to destabilise it are often carried out with great intensity.Russia’s economic interest is very easy to define, namely the desire to influence European sentiment against the imposition of sanctions on Russia, especially its energy resources, and to “return to normalcy” as soon as possible, that is, to buy Russian raw materials without constraints.

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  Anti-Ukrainian propaganda has replaced much anti-vaccine propaganda, although the sources are often the same and tend to work in the interests of the Kremlin - according to analysis by Fakehunter.

  With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the content of fake news circulating on social media changed almost overnight.Polish sources that had since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic disseminated anti-vaccine content (often inspired by media associated with the Kremlin) now began to publish information falsifying the picture of the war in Ukraine and aiming to set Poles against Ukrainian refugees. Ukrainian crimes against Poles eight decades ago, for example, were dragged into this information war.