Polish journalist: Russia exploits internal divisions to spread disinformation

Russia continues its efforts for influence through fake content, bots and sophisticated operations like "Doppelganger", says Polish journalist Agata Pyka in an interview with The Geopost.

According to Pyka, Moscow is not inventing new tactics, but is using old models that have proven effective, exploiting internal polarization in European societies. The Polish journalist says that Russian anti-EU, anti-Ukraine, anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant narratives are often amplified by domestic political actors, especially the far-right, which, she says, makes Russian interference even more dangerous and difficult to stop.

Full interview:

The Geopost: What is the situation of disinformation in Poland and Central Europe?

Wedge: Thank you very much for inviting me. The recent elections in Poland have shown that while Russian narratives are present and Russia is still trying to exert influence and there was fake content, bots and other different disinformation tactics, various organizations compared and analyzed the elections afterwards and showed that in fact the level of foreign influence efforts is more or less coherent over the years. It did not increase exponentially this year compared to others and the efforts and the evolution of Russian influence remain more or less similar. So Russia is not trying any new, unknown tactics. It relies on things that it has tested in the past and that have worked, unfortunately, worked for them in the past. We are talking about operations like Operation Doppelganger, where they take existing media and copy the interface, but insert their own content, which is, of course, full of disinformation, fake narratives, harmful narratives.

Any reader can fall prey to it, thinking that it is a legitimate source that they know, that they have followed in the past. Many such operations were carried out. So, in this regard, we see similar efforts. Disinformation is amplified within Poland at the domestic level. We have our own actors, our politicians, far-right parties that often amplify that kind of content and narratives themselves.

So Russia is in a comfortable position where it doesn't really need to do much because these narratives are already amplified at the Polish level and this is a major threat that is difficult to target.

The Geopost: What narratives do you identify as new narratives because you have a drone strike? What are the new narratives around this situation now?

Wedge: In fact, we see things more or less similar to the past. We see anti-European Union narratives, so a lot of skepticism towards the EU. We see anti-Ukrainian narratives, which are playing on a difficult underlying history that Poland has with Ukraine. There are anti-LGBT narratives, anti-immigrant narratives. So the content is more or less repeated over the years. We don't see any new inventions from the Russian side.

They are aware that the best approach, the best for them, obviously, for the success of their, of their intervention efforts, is to take something that is already polarizing in Polish society, which is already a difficult topic for us, where people have different and very, very different opinions, and try to amplify this, try to play around these topics and increase the polarization that is already naturally hidden in Poland.

The Geopost: What is your message to the media in the Balkans, how to protect themselves from Russian disinformation?

Wedge: I think it is necessary to find a balance between covering disinformation, covering foreign interference attempts and not amplifying them too much. If we put them in the spotlight and inform a lot about them, we will also amplify them. But if we ignore them completely, they will continue to simmer in society and spread. So I think it is important to achieve this balance, to criticize them, and the role of independent media, the role of NGOs, is absolutely essential in this. We hope, also at the state level, that the state will be proactive. Like in Poland, we brought out the electoral umbrella. It was an electoral protection plan that covered various measures to protect against disinformation and foreign influence. To some extent it was successful, it was definitely something new. It was the first time we brought out something like this and implemented it.

It's a good starting point and I think it's a good example for other countries to learn from and perhaps copy.

/The Geopost