Putin's Agents of Chaos: How Pro-Russian Trolls Poison Poland's Infosphere

Welcome to the dark world of Putinophiles and super-spreaders of pro-Russian propaganda. The Polish infosphere is filled with them. Some have seeped deep into government structures.

"Having a population of less than 9 million, Israel is surrounded by a hundred million enemies. Thus, a new promised land had to be established, and it was found here, in Ukraine, where a Khazar state had thrived a thousand years ago and Rabbinic Judaism was the official religion. It is to this land that the architects of the New Jerusalem want Jews to resettle...".

The story comes from a YouTube video with half a million views and over one thousand comments, many of them like this one: "Now we finally know the real cause of this war."

Welcome to the dark world of Putinophiles and super-spreaders of pro-Russian propaganda. The government is not the target here. It is us, ordinary citizens and internet users.

OPERATION „GHOSTWRITER"

At least since 2016, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) has been conducting Operation Ghostwriter with the aim to (as quoted from the official website of the Polish Cyberspace Defense Forces Command): * "Disrupt Poland's relations with the US and NATO countries. * Disrupt Polish-Ukrainian relations. * Discredit the aid provided by Poland to Ukraine. * Create conditions for the outbreak of social unrest in Poland."

Here are some of the more noteworthy disinformation campaigns Russia’s military intelligence ran as part of the Ghostwriter operation:

Passing off as Poland’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration, in January this year, Russian intelligence services forged the ministry's official logo and sent thousands of emails to Polish citizens asking them to provide information on whether they are hosting or renting rooms to any Ukrainians. Reluctance was met with a warning message claiming that "failure to provide requested data would result in a fine as specified by the Administrative Code" (there is no such code in Polish law).

In May, Russian hackers compromised the website of a military hospital in the city of Lublin. Using the fake website, they ran an article suggesting that the corpses of members of a (real) Belarusian volunteer regiment fighting on the side of the Ukrainian army had been quietly brought to the Polish hospital. The notice claimed that the hospital’s authorities "support the actions of this military unit."

Back in March, GRU officers posing as the Polish police sent out a message to several thousand citizens (fake sender addresses included: P0licja.eu, Police-pl.info and P0licja.info). Recipients were told to expect bomb attacks, and as a result, not to approach any bags or suitcases left unattended, not to open anonymous packages, and above all, to inform the law enforcement in case they witness any type of suspicious behavior.

- It was a calculated effort intended to cause panic," Maksym Sijer, an expert on Russian disinformation tactics associated with the INFO OPS Poland foundation, tells us. The foundation’s profile of activity is focused on "analyzing the manipulation processes aimed at the Polish-speaking information environment." Its head, Kamil Basaj, is an associate at the Polish Ministry of Defense, an adviser to the Government Center for Security, and a civilian specialist at the Cyberspace Defense Forces.

But who would be naive enough to fall for such obvious fakes?

- You are not the target audience – Mr. Sijer tells us. - This is supposed to reach people who are, for example, fans of Wojciech "Jaszczur" (the Lizard) Olszański aka Jabłonowski. It’s meant to facilitate their radicalization process and provide them with arguments, pseudo-facts useful in online disputes. The idea is to convince them that Polish authorities secretly support the Ukrainian far-right, the Nazis, and that the Polish state is no longer protecting the interests of Polish citizens. Once they’ve been effectively radicalized, soaked in disinformation, such people are then ready to cooperate with Russia. Because in their view, Russia will be morally OK. Since Polish authorities serve the interests of foreign actors: Ukrainians, Americans, Jews... it is acceptable to betray such a state. And then there is the broader aspect: this misinformation, obvious to you, is injected into the infosphere in the Middle and Far East, South America, Africa. In Japanese, Arabic and Khmer, Poland is portrayed as America's lapdog, an anti-Russian nest from which hordes of mercenaries crawl out . You must remember that outside Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, the perception of Russia is quite different. In Africa, the Russians have achieved what we call information supremacy. The Wagner Group, after all, was created, among other things, to buy out African media.

In early June, three and a half million Poles using the Russian massaging app Telegram received information about recruitment for a Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian military unit fighting on the frontlines in Donbass. To this end, GRU hackers created a fake "Ministry of Defense" account on Telegram, using the eagle of the Duchy of Warsaw as its avatar. They then started uploading posts meant to look like advertisements: "Become a soldier," "Proud to serve Poland and Ukraine," "Foreign mission." Distributed content read: "The Ministry of Defense invites volunteers to serve in the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Army Corps (...) Apply online via the following address."

The address is real, and the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian unit - not the corps - does indeed exist. It is stationed in Lublin, consists of professional soldiers, does not recruit volunteers and has no plans of moving to the frontlines.

The Polish Defense Ministry's Computer Security Incident Response Team reports that the fake recruitment campaign for the "corps" is the work of a hacker group known as "actor UNC1151" operating from Belarus. The group also carried out other similar campaigns as part of the "Ghostwriter" operation.

TROLLS FROM OLGINO

There are plenty civilian trolls as well. Most of them work under the aegis of the Russian Federal News Agency (FAN), which owns more than a dozen large Russian and foreign-language sites such as Gazeta.ru, Sputnikglobe.com, Topwar.ru, Life.ru, Pravda.ru, Oroszhirek.hu, DEnews-front.info. Combined, they have a total website traffic of over 30 million page views each day.

FAN is also a pipeline for other entities spreading disinformation - among them are magazines and books published by private foundations (including Russki Mir, the Foundation for the Support of Public Diplomacy and the Saint Basil the Great Foundation) and multilingual broadcasting stations like Russia Today and Sputnik. Then there is also an entire army of paid internet users. Their most famous group is officially known as the Internet Research Agency (AII), but is widely referred to as web brigades or the "trolls of Olgino" (a district of St. Petersburg). Internet users, influencers, and provocateurs paid by the state create fake news and comment on it on social media.

Among other things, this entire conglomerate is working to deepen divisions in Europe and portray the EU as inefficient. Some of the main narratives include: * European elites (corporations, bankers, bureaucrats, media owners) are intentionally working against the interests of ordinary people. * Traditional, universal human values are under attack by the "rotten Western nihilists" who promote genderism, feminism, LGBTQ ideology and political correctness. * EU countries are losing their sovereignty to Germany. * Europe is on the brink of civil war due to successive waves of immigration. * And finally: fascism is resurgent in Ukraine.

- Pro-Russian trolls aren't just concerned with convincing people to believe these particular narratives - explains Martyna Bildziukiewicz, the Brussels-based head of the East StratCom Task Force (ESTC), the EU's team for combating Russian disinformation. - Their goal is much more dangerous: to create chaos and confusion so that no one knows where the truth ultimately lies. They want anyone seeking information to get confused and give up participating in the debate altogether.

Any Russian who speaks and writes decent English, German, Czech, Hungarian or Polish can get a job at the troll farm. They are even paid more than journalistic - more than 50.000 rubles a month (little over 500 dollars). A troll’s task is to create at least 20 posts a day, and make them resonate as strongly as possible.

Two authentic examples from the Russia Today TV website: * "In Denmark, places have been created for zoophiles who want to have intercourse with a turtle." * "The words 'mom' and 'dad' have been banned in numerous countries across Western Europe. They’ve been replaced with ‘first parent' and 'second parent'."

Just for the record: none of this is true. It is worth noting, however, who in the Polish infosphere has picked up on both topics.

At the launch of his 2020 presidential campaign in Warsaw, National Movement leader Krzysztof Bosak stated: 'In certain Western countries, the terms 'man' and 'woman,' 'mom' and 'dad' are being prohibited as they are allegedly violating someone's rights. The idea here is to invert the entire social order that our civilization is built upon!’

"Solidarity Weekly’s" editorial board posted a Tweet very much in the same vein: "The words 'mom' and 'dad' are now banned. Politically correct madness."

Finally, the self-proclaimed "defender of life" followed by more than 4,000 people on Twitter, Rafał Ostrowski, Tweeted: "The Wild West 'law' prohibits the use of the words 'mom' and 'dad', and criticism of abortion, euthanasia, 'homo-marriage', sexual deviance, Islam and public adherence to Catholicism."

Now about the "brothels for zoophiles" in Denmark - this "news" was spread in Poland by, among others, the Wsedno24.pl and Nczas.com web portals. The latter is an online branch of "Najwyższy Czas!", a weekly owned by the former MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke. It read: "A brothel for zoophiles will open in Copenhagen. This is the first such case on the Old Continent. Danish law allows human-animal relations. According to Denmark's Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fishery Vlad Jorgensen, intercourse with animals is a constitutional right of every citizen."

Again, just for the record: there is none and never has been a minister by that name in Denmark.

- The rotten, immoral, perverted West is a constant vector of influence for Moscow's agents of chaos. Its roots go all the way back to Czarist Russia – Mr. Sijer tells us. - The term "rotten" was invented before 1917. One motive for this influence is to show the West through the prism of pathological behavior: negative emotions, demoralization, riots, crime. This is then juxtaposed with a carefully crafted image of Russia - a stable refuge of traditional values, where law and order persists and there’s no racial unrest. Meanwhile, there are more Muslims living in the Russian Federation than in France, there are not only Muslim neighborhoods, but also lands, such as Chechnya, and there are no riots because there is a brutal dictatorship.

12? THOUSAND FAKES FROM KREMLIN

Web brigades mostly consist of "educated people from smaller towns who moved to Moscow or St. Petersburg in search of a job, and who are well aware of what they participate in," writes the head of the International Security Department at the Pedagogical University in Kraków, Prof. Olga Wasiuta, in the Geopolitical Review (an academic quarterly listed by the Polish Ministry of Education). "Very few of them believe that they are actually fighting fascist rebels from Malorussia."

Troll farms – much like actual factories – are subdivided into specialized departments. Content managers rewrite real press agency news so that their tone is consistent with the Kremlin's narrative. Bloggers create posts spread in chat rooms and on social media platforms. Illustrators come up with memes and create maps of Ukraine devoid of its southwestern districts. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists position the produced content so that it pops up as high and often as possible when searched. Their job is also to create trending slogans (e.g., #NotOurWar, #StopUkrainizingPoland) and to report to the administration (e.g., Facebook) all content that is inconsistent with Moscow's line of narrative.

Martyna Bildziukiewicz's team has been monitoring the activities of these groups since 2019. They have created a database of Russian disinformation served in 15 languages and disseminated all across the European Union, the Western Balkans, and Northern Africa (database address: Euvsdisinfo.eu). The database currently contains 12,000 half-truths, manipulations and falsehoods,  along with the dates and addresses of initial sources.

Here are some of the archived examples: *[Russian] holders of the Polish Card plan to stage a pro-EU "maidan revolution" in Kaliningrad (last December 22, Sputnik Poland). * Over 1,200 Polish mercenaries were killed and thousands more have been wounded in Ukraine (last December 30, Sputnik Belarus). * Despite the officially declared embargo, Germany and Poland have placed orders for Russian oil (January 3, Oroszhirek.hu). * Polish TV broadcasts a weather forecast with a map showing Lviv as part of Poland (January 17, Topwar.ru). * The US promised western Ukraine to Poland if Warsaw pays off Kyiv's debt (January 23, De.news-front.info).

None of this is true. Now let's see who in the Polish infosphere helps to boost and share this fake news.

"THE ROTTEN WEST WANTS TO TURN YOUR KIDS TRANS"

On April 19th, Sputniknews.com reported that "Western countries are illicitly abducting Ukrainian children. Just like Native American children were once taken away from their homes and put into distant boarding schools, a special group called the White Angels is now forcefully evacuating children from villages in the war-torn regions of Ukraine."

A Telegram user with some 6 thousand followers nicknamed "Dostawcy Wrażeń" (Sensations Suppliers) writes tirelessly about these alleged child-abducting angels. In early May, they uploaded a video with a description: "11-year-old girl from Bakhmut tells us how the White Angels of the Ukrainian army kidnapped children." In the video, a teenage girl hugging a large teddy bear talks - in Russian - about Ukrainian police officers who informed her of her parents' deaths and offered her a trip to Germany. She then says that she has "heard" of other such cases.

Here are some examples of other stories shared by "Sensations Suppliers":

*A picture showing two human thighs (the left one looks as if it was bitten by a dog) with something like a skin-covered bun between them. The caption reads: "This is what the final stage of a sex change surgery looks like. Skin tissue was taken from the thigh. This artificial penis is not suitable for sex, procreation, nor urination. Let me remind you that such transition surgeries are also performed on small children."

*A screenshot from the website of an elementary school in Gdańsk and a notice about Ukrainian language classes being offered for kids in fourth grade and higher. The caption reads: "The time has come for Poles to learn the language of their masters."

*A close-up on the door of a Medical Center for Refugees with the caption: "I have always known that Poles have enough money to not only help their own citizens but also the incoming Banderites."