Poland breaks up Russian operation paying Ukrainian refugees to hold protests

Jun 29, 2026 | Defence

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland has detained and deported nine Ukrainians and two Belarusians it says were involved in a Russian operation that paid Ukrainian refugees to hold demonstrations.

The aim was to “stoke tensions” and “break down social trust”, says the Internal Security Agency (ABW).

In a statement on Monday, the ABW said that the 11 individuals have, since autumn 2025, “been recruiting and paying participants for demonstrations organised among Ukrainian refugees residing in Poland”.

“Protest participants received remuneration for their participation and, according to the ABW’s knowledge, the funds for this purpose came from Russia,” added the agency.

“The organisers aimed to gradually influence the Ukrainian refugee community in Poland and use this group to promote political slogans. Emotional topics, including corruption scandals and current events in Ukrainian domestic politics, were used to initiate protests.”

The ABW said that the operation was another example of how Moscow uses “actions below the threshold of classic aggression” that are intended to “break down social trust, stoke tensions, and use people fleeing war as tools of Russian influence operations”.

 

Poland has been a primary target of such Russian “hybrid actions”, which include sabotage, disinformation, espionage and cyberwarfare.

In many cases, members of Poland’s Ukrainian and Belarusian communities – which are by far the country’s largest foreign national groups – have been hired to carry out such operations. Almost a million Ukrainian refugees remain in Poland, as well as hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainian migrants.

In the latest incident, the suspects were detained in five cities – Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Zakopane and Bydgoszcz – spread across Poland. Jacek Dobrzyński, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, wrote on social media that the arrests had taken place “in recent days”.

“The detainees have already been expelled from Poland,” he added, noting that the suspects included five Ukrainian men, four Ukrainian women, and two Belarusian men.

Earlier this month, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, warned that Russia is “waging a full-scale cognitive war against us”, including “hiring groups and individuals operating under multiple layers of camouflage in operationally difficult-to-access spaces that we still do not recognise as classic theatres of war”.

Moscow’s aim is to “weaken the will to resist” by “undermining democratic values” and “keeping us in a constant state of polarisation”, said Sikorski, who also claimed that there is “a Russian fifth column here in Poland”.

Last week, Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation warned that Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU, had been tasked with “preparing provocations” intended to exploit and exacerbate current tensions between Poland and Ukraine.

Russia has long sought to aggravate tensions between Poland and Ukraine. It stepped up those efforts in 2022, when Poland became one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in its defence against Russian aggression and welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees.

Last year, a Ukrainian teenager was arrested on suspicion of working on behalf of Russia to vandalise a memorial to Poles massacred by Ukrainians.

Last month, Poland charged three of its own citizens with working on behalf of Russian intelligence to spread disinformation intended to evoke support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Służby specjalne (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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