The Polish Election & Russian Interference: Expected Storm Never Materialized

Russ­ian inter­fer­ence attempts in the recent Pol­ish pres­i­den­tial elec­tion were sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than gov­ern­ment warn­ings sug­gest­ed dur­ing the cam­paign peri­od. On June 10, 2025, New East­ern Europe report­ed that, despite repeat­ed alerts from War­saw about unprece­dent­ed Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion and cyber­at­tacks tar­get­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, experts con­clud­ed that Moscow’s inter­fer­ence efforts were much less intense than expect­ed. This was due to Poland’s “elec­tion umbrel­la” strat­e­gy and lessons from Roma­nia prov­ing effec­tive. The arti­cle begins:

On June 1st, Poles elect­ed their new Pres­i­dent Karol Nawroc­ki sup­port­ed by the nation­al-con­ser­v­a­tive Law and Jus­tice (PiS) par­ty. Dur­ing the cam­paign peri­od lead­ing up to the two elec­tion rounds, the rul­ing coali­tion repeat­ed­ly warned of for­eign inter­fer­ence, name­ly from Rus­sia. The Krem­lin has long been known for med­dling with elec­tions around the world. In Roma­nia, it con­duct­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns against NATO and the EU and ampli­fied the voic­es of pro-Russ­ian candidates.

Read more: https://neweasterneurope.eu/2025/06/10/resisting-foreign-interference-polands-presidential-election-and-the-russian-challenge/

Key Points

• Dig­i­tal Affairs Min­is­ter Krzysztof Gawkows­ki claimed Rus­si­a’s GRU “dou­bled its activ­i­ty against Poland” but post-elec­tion analy­sis found much low­er dis­in­for­ma­tion lev­els than 2024 Euro­pean Par­lia­ment elections.
• NASK expert Agniesz­ka Lip­ińs­ka not­ed absence of aggres­sive tac­tics seen else­where, such as social media reach reduc­tion, pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence leaks, or Roman­ian-scale algo­rith­mic manipulation.
• Poland’s diver­si­fied social media land­scape made it hard­er for dis­in­for­ma­tion actors to con­duct cam­paigns com­pared to Roma­ni­a’s Face­book and Tik­Tok-dom­i­nat­ed environment.
• The OSCE praised Poland’s counter-inter­fer­ence mea­sures while not­ing no spe­cif­ic new threats were report­ed between elec­tion rounds, val­i­dat­ing the “elec­tion umbrel­la” strategy.

The Polish Election & Russian Interference: Poland’s Democratic Resilience

Amid the 2025 Pol­ish pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, author­i­ties uncov­ered what they claimed was a surge of Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing the vote, includ­ing coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns and cyber­at­tacks designed to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and polar­ize the elec­torate. Inves­ti­ga­tions iden­ti­fied Krem­lin-backed net­works and sus­pect­ed oper­a­tives ampli­fy­ing anti-EU and anti-Ukrain­ian nar­ra­tives, while dig­i­tal foren­sics revealed the use of fake social media accounts and bot-dri­ven pro­pa­gan­da to sway pub­lic opinion.

Despite these efforts, the Kremlin’s infor­ma­tion war failed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact the elec­tion out­come, with pro-Russ­ian can­di­dates receiv­ing neg­li­gi­ble sup­port and Pol­ish civ­il soci­ety demon­strat­ing strong resis­tance to for­eign manip­u­la­tion. Exter­nal research cor­rob­o­rates that Russ­ian and Belaru­sian oper­a­tions deployed thou­sands of fake accounts to spread dis­in­for­ma­tion, while Poland’s piv­otal sup­port for Ukraine made it a prime tar­get for Moscow’s hybrid tac­tics. In response, the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment imple­ment­ed robust coun­ter­mea­sures, and the Euro­pean Union intro­duced new sanc­tions and infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols. The Pol­ish expe­ri­ence under­scores both the per­sis­tent threat of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence and the effec­tive­ness of coor­di­nat­ed nation­al and Euro­pean respons­es in defend­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic processes.

Exter­nal References:

1. Poland faces ‘unprece­dent­ed’ Russ­ian inter­fer­ence ahead of pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, min­is­ter says

2. Poland says Rus­sia is try­ing to inter­fere in pres­i­den­tial election

3. Ille­gal Dop­pel­ganger Oper­a­tion: Tar­get­ing the Pol­ish Elections

 Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.