The Telegram channels spreading pro-Russian propaganda in Poland

In a clearing in a forest, two men stand behind a row of wooden poles that have pictures of faces stuck on top of them.

The portraits include US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. In front of them hangs the US flag.

The men are wearing camouflage clothing with blue markings – the colour often worn by Ukrainian soldiers to identify them on the battlefield.

“We don’t need allies like you,” one of the men says in Ukrainian, as he sets fire to the flag and portraits.

But this video, shared with thousands of subscribers of a Polish-language Telegram channel, is staged. The uniforms are generic camouflage ones easily bought online, while the Ukrainian words are heavily mispronounced and spoken with a strong Russian accent.

It was shared on the Telegram channel Polska Grupa Informacyjna, one of 22 Polish-language channels, with more than 150,000 subscribers between them, that the BBC has identified as sharing various forms of pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda.

Telegram is not widely used in Poland, but experts say false messages on it are amplified among extremist groups and then spread on to other platforms that have a bigger reach.

The 22 channels largely present themselves as Polish news and information services. Two claim to be “impartial” while one promises “unbiased” news. One channel bills itself as offering “reliable and verified information hidden from the public”, while another has the slogan “we are where the truth is needed”.

Most of them frequently cite or replicate content from Russian state media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, which have been banned in the European Union for manipulating information and spreading propaganda. Poland is a member of the EU.

The channels often quote or link to Russian regime figures and supporters. President Vladimir Putin, deputy head of the national security council Dmitry Medvedev, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Russian propagandist TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and pro-Russian war commentators known as “Z-bloggers” are all cited.

Some posts on these channels include outright false information. For example, an image posted by the channel UKR LEAKS_pl shows figures in military clothing applying fake blood to people and is captioned “how the ‘Bucha victims’ were prepared”, implying that the well-documented killings of hundreds of Ukrainians by Russian forces in 2022 did not happen.

Some channels frequently refer to Ukrainian leaders and soldiers as “Nazis”. In one post, InfoDefensePOLAND called the government in Kyiv a “Nazi regime”, claiming it was “controlled by the United States” and others in the West.

Often a mixture of true and false information is shared, or channels omit crucial information to give a misleading impression. On 17 June, for example, Russia carried out its deadliest attack on Kyiv in months, hitting residential buildings and, according to Ukrainian authorities, killing at least 28 people.

More than half of the channels completely ignored the incident, some of them instead highlighting Russian army advances in Ukraine. A few others, echoing Kremlin narratives, blamed Ukraine for the casualties, claiming Russia’s attacks only targeted military sites.

By analysing Telegram data, the BBC found that many of the channels emerged around the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

At least three originally published in Russian before being rebranded as Polish.

The Telegram data reveals that most of the 22 channels frequently quote, repost, or mention one another. In 2022 and 2023, this included sharing lists described as “good Polish Telegram sources” and urging followers to subscribe.

Poland has been a crucial player in the alliance of countries supporting Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, leading the way in the early months in sending military aid and equipment.

Anxious to avoid becoming a target of Russian aggression, Poland has become an increasingly prominent defence partner in the European Union and Nato, and has taken in about a million Ukrainian refugees since 2022.

Since 2022, Russian disinformation and influence operations have become “a consistent element of the Polish digital infosphere”, says Aleksy Szymkiewicz of the Polish fact-checking organisation Demagog.

He says Telegram functions as a “starting point”.

“False or manipulative claims are posted there first – then they spread to bigger platforms like X. And then from X, it’s going, for example, to discussions in Facebook groups.”

According to Mr Szymkiewicz, these pro-Russian Telegram channels aim to discourage support for Ukraine, polarise public opinion, and drive a wedge between Polish and Ukrainian societies.

Poland is now showing signs of fatigue towards refugees, partly driven by anti-Ukrainian propaganda, he says.

Some of the messages circulating on the channels are overtly pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian, but others are more subtle.

For example, some recent posts suggest that increased military spending in EU countries seeking to counter what they see as a threat from Russia, is driving citizens – including Poles – into poverty.

Other common narratives use unsubstantiated generalisations about Ukrainian refugees, portraying them as aggressive, law-breaking and a drain on host countries.

Mr Szymkiewicz says messages like these “play on real fears” by tapping into existing economic and cultural anxieties within Polish society.

Filip Głowacz, a senior analyst at NASK National Research Institute in Warsaw, says there is a “strong historical resentment to Russia” in Poland, which was in the Soviet sphere of influence for several decades.

This can mean that “explicitly pro-Russian messages don’t work”, and pro-Russian actors sometimes “push pro-Kremlin narratives together with far-right content, conspiracy theories, etc”.

Telegram is an “ideal platform” for this, he says, explaining it has an outsized influence among far-right communities and conspiracy theorists.

While the identities behind most channels remain unclear, experts say there are signs of ties to Russia or its ally Belarus. According to Mr Głowacz, the publishing times of many of the channels suggest they follow a shift-based posting schedule aligned with Moscow’s working hours.

UKR LEAKS_pl is part of the wider UKR LEAKS group – a multilingual web of Telegram channels and affiliated platforms run by Vasily Prozorov, a former officer in the Ukrainian security service, who switched sides to collaborate with Russia.

InfoDefensePOLAND belongs to the InfoDefense group, which operates in more than 30 languages, and is linked to Yury Podolyaka, a controversial pro-Kremlin blogger originally from Ukraine. He is now in Russia and has been sentenced in absentia by Ukrainian courts for collaborating with Moscow.

The channel told the BBC it had more than 500 volunteers around the world. “There are a lot of people in the world who support Russia. They’re helping us. Yuri Podolyaka is one of them,” it said.

Another channel, Pravda PL, is part of the Pravda group – a large international network of pro-Kremlin news websites and social media pages.

France’s state agency for tackling disinformation, Viginum, says it is linked to a Russian IT firm based in Russian-occupied Crimea.

According to Newsguard – a company that rates news and information websites for reliability – Pravda is spreading content so widely that it is “infecting” AI chatbot responses.

Newsguard tested 10 chatbots with a sample of false narratives shared on Pravda. It says they sometimes repeated or cited the disinformation, while at other times questioning it.

Pravda and UKR_LEAKS did not respond to BBC requests for comment.

Polska Grupa Informacyjna, the channel that shared the video of the US portraits being burned, shares a mixture of content, including some that gives a Ukrainian perspective. It told the BBC it was “an independent news channel” and its “overriding principle is impartiality”, strongly rejecting claims that it promoted pro-Kremlin narratives.

It said content on the channel may be shared “as an example of controversial material circulating on the web, without any approval or assessment from the editorial staff”. Material may be removed or corrected if it turns out to be inauthentic, it added.

Mr Szymkiewicz says the spread of pro-Russian disinformation on Telegram is concerning, as it allows content from state-media sources such as RT and Sputnik to remain present in the Polish-language media landscape, often reaching a wide audience.

“Such content is frequently false, manipulated, or outright fabricated,” he says.

He adds that anti-Ukrainian posts “legitimise and entrench the perspectives and narratives of the Russian regime in Polish public discourse”.

BBC World Service is launching a new language service on Tuesday, BBC News Polska. It is the first new language service from the BBC since March 2018, bringing our impartial and trusted global journalism, including original reporting from across Europe, to the Polish-speaking audience. It is the first BBC language service to use AI translation technology – all translation has human editorial oversight, and is clearly labelled.