Pro-Russian Telegram Channels in Poland- 22 Networks Spread Kremlin Propaganda

Pro-Russ­ian Telegram chan­nels in Poland have been exposed as a sophis­ti­cat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion net­work tar­get­ing Pol­ish soci­ety. On June 24, 2025, BBC’s Glob­al Dis­in­for­ma­tion Unit revealed 22 Pol­ish-lan­guage Telegram chan­nels with over 150,000 sub­scribers col­lec­tive­ly spread­ing pro-Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da, includ­ing staged videos show­ing fake Ukrain­ian sol­diers burn­ing Amer­i­can flags and false claims deny­ing the Bucha mas­sacre, doc­u­ment­ed as war crimes. The arti­cle begins:

A wave of dis­in­for­ma­tion has been unleashed online since Israel began strikes on Iran last week, with dozens of posts reviewed by BBC Ver­i­fy seek­ing to ampli­fy the effec­tive­ness of Tehran’s response. Our analy­sis found a num­ber of videos — cre­at­ed using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — boast­ing of Iran’s mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties, along­side fake clips show­ing the after­math of strikes on Israeli tar­gets. The three most viewed fake videos BBC Ver­i­fy found have col­lec­tive­ly amassed over 100 mil­lion views across mul­ti­ple plat­forms. Pro-Israeli accounts have also shared dis­in­for­ma­tion online, main­ly by recir­cu­lat­ing old clips of protests and gath­er­ings in Iran, false­ly claim­ing that they show mount­ing dis­sent against the gov­ern­ment and sup­port among Ira­ni­ans for Israel’s mil­i­tary cam­paign. Israel launched strikes in Iran on 13 June, lead­ing to sev­er­al rounds of Iran­ian mis­sile and drone attacks on Israel. One organ­i­sa­tion that analy­ses open-source imagery described the vol­ume of dis­in­for­ma­tion online as “aston­ish­ing” and accused some “engage­ment farm­ers” of seek­ing to prof­it from the con­flict by shar­ing mis­lead­ing con­tent designed to attract atten­tion online.”

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k78715enxo

Key Points

• The chan­nels fre­quent­ly repli­cate con­tent from banned Russ­ian state media RT and Sput­nik, often cit­ing Putin, Medvedev, and pro-Russ­ian “Z‑bloggers” to spread Krem­lin narratives.
• UKR LEAKS_pl is oper­at­ed by for­mer Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty offi­cer Vasi­ly Pro­zorov who switched sides to col­lab­o­rate with Rus­sia, while InfoDe­fense­POLAND belongs to the broad­er InfoDe­fense network.
• Many chan­nels emerged dur­ing Rus­si­a’s 2022 inva­sion, with at least three orig­i­nal­ly pub­lish­ing in Russ­ian before rebrand­ing as Pol­ish news ser­vices claim­ing to offer “impar­tial” and “reli­able” information.
• The dis­in­for­ma­tion aims to dis­cour­age Pol­ish sup­port for Ukraine, spread anti-refugee sen­ti­ment, and dri­ve wedges between Pol­ish and Ukrain­ian soci­eties through eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al anxieties.

Telegram & Influence Operations

Telegram has become a piv­otal plat­form for influ­ence oper­a­tions, with its encryp­tion, large group capac­i­ties, and min­i­mal mod­er­a­tion mak­ing it an ide­al tool for both state and non-state actors to spread pro­pa­gan­da and manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion. Pro-Krem­lin actors have lever­aged Telegram to flood chan­nels with nar­ra­tives aimed at sway­ing elec­tions and under­min­ing West­ern insti­tu­tions, as detailed in reports on how Russ­ian influ­ence cam­paigns tar­get key Euro­pean nations through Telegram and the rapid growth of pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da net­works on Ger­man Telegram chan­nels. Russ­ian state media out­lets have also expand­ed their pres­ence on Telegram to bypass bans on oth­er plat­forms, as high­light­ed in cov­er­age of Sput­nik and RT’s migra­tion to Telegram.

This shift has enabled coor­di­nat­ed cam­paigns that ampli­fy Krem­lin-aligned nar­ra­tives and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, tar­get­ing both domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al audi­ences. Exter­nal research con­firms that Telegram’s unique features—such as unlim­it­ed sub­scriber chan­nels and resis­tance to censorship—have made it a cen­tral medi­um for both pro- and anti-Krem­lin com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict, with mil­lions of posts ana­lyzed in recent stud­ies. Telegram’s role as a hub for state-backed infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion is fur­ther under­scored by the activ­i­ty of Russ­ian diplo­mat­ic chan­nels world­wide, which post dai­ly to advance strate­gic nar­ra­tives and influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion in tar­get­ed coun­tries.

Recent analy­ses also high­light the platform’s use as an incu­ba­tor for nar­ra­tive attacks that are lat­er ampli­fied across main­stream social media, pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to infor­ma­tion integri­ty and demo­c­ra­t­ic processes.

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.