Resisting foreign interference: Poland’s presidential election and the Russian challenge

Evening view of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. Photo: Shutterstock

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. In Germany, it spread AI-generated content on social media platforms, while France has fallen victim to data leaks.

Given Warsaw’s strategic importance and weakening support for Ukraine in the country, Moscow’s core objective is to influence society and promote Eurosceptic, anti-western, anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian narratives.

But experts claim that the level of Russian interference in this year’s presidential election in Poland has been much lower than expected, attributing it to a diversified social media landscape, the limited powers of the president, and having learnt lessons from Romania’s recent election.

In state of digital war

“Poland is definitely in a state of digital war with Russia,” the country’s Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told the broadcaster TVN24 in April. Gawkowski – who supervises and coordinates efforts to combat foreign digital threats – has made similar statements throughout the whole presidential campaign.

In the beginning of May, he warned that Poland was facing an “unprecedented attempt by Russia” to interfere in the election, claiming that Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency (GRU) has “doubled its activity against Poland” compared to last year.

According to the government, the Kremlin was targeting election committees, spreading disinformation, and conducting attacks on critical infrastructure. Over the month of May preceding the run-off, Poland noted on average 2,106 cybersecurity threats, 622 domains flagged as potential scams, and 574 reports on the activity of hacktivists per day, based on figures shared by the ministry of digital affairs on X.

One of the most notable examples of attempted interference was a cyber-attack against the IT systems of the ruling Civic Platform party announced in April by the government. “Foreign interference in the elections has started. The security services point to an Eastern footprint,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X.

In reaction to the various threats, the government announced its election protection plan, also referred to as the “election umbrella”. The strategy proposed by the digital affairs ministry included the monitoring of social media for disinformation; training for NGOs, journalists and election committees; and strengthening cybersecurity measures.

The authorities also launched diagnostic tools for citizens and businesses – including domain security scans and password leak reports – and developed the Bezpieczne Wybory (Safe Elections) website, which offers information about the electoral process.

The government also enhanced cooperation between the Internal Security Agency (ABW), Government Security Center (RCB), the national research agency responsible for monitoring external influences on the election (NASK), the State Election Commission (PKW), and relevant ministerial bodies.

“In recent months, the largest-ever exercise of the country’s cybersecurity system was organized, with nearly 60 state and private institutions taking part, testing scenarios for cyber-attacks on election systems and critical infrastructure,” the ministry told New Eastern Europe.

“We’re doing everything so that Russia doesn’t steal our democracy, even if it will try to,” Gawkowski said before the first election round to Polish media.

Lukewarm attempts

While being an important step in increasing cybersecurity, the election umbrella contained measures that had already been in place previously – such as the Bezpieczne Wybory website or flagging and taking down disinformation – raising questions about its actual innovativeness and effectiveness.

Asked about the strategy, experts generally praised it but also remained reserved in their assessments.

For Dominika Kasprowicz, a researcher at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and a member of the state commission set up to investigate Russian and Belarusian influence, NASK has been successful in identifying and reporting threats. However, since its duties and functions tend to shift depending on the government in power, its findings from previous years are of limited comparative value.

“The incidents are being identified and reported, there is an increased awareness that something could happen, there is increased discipline among journalists,” added Agnieszka Lipińska from NASK.

But when asked about the worst-case scenario when we spoke in early May, she stayed cautious: “Let’s say it’s an umbrella for this kind of drizzle that we’ve been experiencing for now. We’ll see how it does if it starts coming down in buckets.”

Despite this, after both rounds of the election, all signs point to the fact that the Russian storm never came. After the first round, Lipińska told New Eastern Europe that the level of disinformation was much lower than during the European Parliament election in 2024. She also stressed that other forms of interference were not as advanced as previously expected.

“You don’t see such aggressive actions as reducing the reach of supporters of a given party [on social media] as was the case in the United States, there are no leaks of private correspondence like in France, and there are no operations with algorithms on a Romanian scale,” she said.

But the expert explained that the goal of disinformation spread by foreign actors is not to change things suddenly: “It serves to influence the public’s long-term view of certain issues and problems.”

“Election disinformation, on the other hand, is different, it’s ad hoc, it’s embedded in that particular moment in time. If the candidates don’t provide a lot of sensationalism, it’s hard to use it,” she added.

“I can’t say that disinformation actions are non-existent, because they are not, but they are just so standard,” she stressed, giving examples of typical narratives spread during election time such as warnings of falsifying or cancelling the results. “We were dealing with pre-election disinformation, but it was not very aggressive.”

And while the ministry of digital affairs continued to publish data on cybersecurity incidents also after the run-off, it did not release any information about large-scale foreign operations or attempts to meddle with the results of the election.

In its post-election report, the observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) generally praised Poland’s performance, including the measures to counter foreign interference.

The OSCE concluded that “While no specific new threats or interference attempts were reported between the two rounds, the Prime Minister announced extension of national security measures in response to ongoing hybrid and cyber threats from the Russian Federation and Belarus.”

Key to success?

Various different reasons can be identified to explain Russia’s disinformation and interference attempts being less intense than expected. Preparing for the presidential election in Poland, NASK analysed foreign influence campaigns conducted in other countries.

First, experts point to a more diverse social media landscape in Poland compared to other states, which makes it harder for disinformation actors to conduct their campaigns. In Romania, where Facebook and TikTok dominate, it was easier to influence the electoral process and voter preferences due to a more homogeneous social media environment, Lipińska explained.

“If there are two dominating kinds of media, a perpetuum mobile appears. The ads and bots generate traffic and the algorithms themselves begin at some point to work in favour of the provocateurs,” she said, adding that Polish citizens use more social media platforms. The environment is much more diverse and, therefore, harder to penetrate and influence.

Another reason may be the limited power of the presidential function in Poland where the president holds a largely ceremonial and supervisory role, with limited executive powers. While he can veto legislation, propose laws and represent the country internationally, actual governance is led by the prime minister and the Council of Ministers, who control domestic and economic policy. In contrast, countries like France or the United States grant their presidents far more executive authority.

That is why this election, albeit important domestically due to high polarization between the ruling coalition and main opposition parties, may have been strategically less relevant for external actors to target.

But the most important factor stemmed from other countries’ experiences. It was the fact that Poland’s presidential election came after the elections in Germany and Romania, largely seen as influenced by the Kremlin, which gave Warsaw time to recognize the patterns and prepare a response.

“After those elections, we’re in a vastly different situation. We were able to learn our lesson,” Lipińska assessed.

The examples of Russian interference in the elections in Germany and Romania earlier this year have increased awareness and discussion around the necessary measures to be taken in order to effectively protect the country from Eastern influences.

On the EU level, member states were able to implement the Defence of Democracy Package initially introduced in December 2023. In July 2024, the Union announced the European Democracy Shield to increase protection against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI).

Based on those measures, Poland was able to benefit from the new system obligating large social media platforms to react to content flagged for disinformation, review it and, if necessary, take it down.

But while being an important step in a deeper and more effective form of cooperation between the countries and large corporations, for now the system has shown limited efficacy. According to NASK, not all content it reported was taken down by Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, showing room for improvement in the future.

Despite overall success in deterring disinformation and foreign influences, Poland should remain vigilant. The experts are calling on the state to continue using measures such as NASK’s monitoring and educational efforts, or the election umbrella in the future. “It is important that this type of monitoring becomes not just a project but an integral element of the country’s security system,” Kasprowicz concluded.

cybersecurity, elections, Karol Nawrocki, Poland, Polish politics, Russian foreign policy, Russian interference