Russian Propaganda Impersonates Polish Soldiers in AI-Generated Videos

Accounts impersonating Polish soldiers are active on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, posting videos that criticize Ukraine, the European Union and the Polish government. Fact-checking analysts have determined that the uniformed figures don't exist, their faces and voices were generated by artificial intelligence, and the entire operation bears the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign targeting Polish-Ukrainian relations.

What the videos show

In the videos, the purported soldiers comment on smuggling from Ukraine, invoke the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and criticize Ukrainian refugees and European Union policy. A recurring theme is the Volhynia massacre, used to build a narrative of alleged Ukrainian ingratitude toward Poland. The material is designed to look like authentic statements from servicemen recorded during informal conversations or interviews.

How the fakes were exposed

Analysts at Demagog.org.pl flagged a number of details betraying the videos' artificial origin. The uniforms don't match patterns used by the Polish Armed Forces, and the lettering visible on them consists of random letters rather than actual unit insignia. The material, made to look like interviews, also lacks the logos of any television stations supposedly conducting them. Final confirmation came from analysis with the Hive Moderation tool, used to detect AI-generated content.

Of the four accounts identified, two have already been deactivated, while the rest continue to publish content. Despite the removal of some profiles, the videos had already spread across the internet and been picked up by other platforms' recommendation algorithms.

The campaign's goal

The mechanism behind the operation redirects audience attention away from Russia as the aggressor and toward Ukraine as an alleged source of threat to Poland. In their statements, the fake soldiers don't criticize Moscow, but rather the country defending itself against the Russian invasion, fitting a broader pattern of Russian disinformation efforts against Poland observed since the start of the war.

nearly half a million views - Demagog.org.pl, on the reach of the videos on YouTube alone

The effectiveness of such operations doesn't depend solely on view counts. Some of the accounts commenting on the videos are most likely bots amplifying the message, but analysts note that some real internet users treat the material as authentic and react in the direction intended by the campaign's creators, sharing it further or commenting in an anti-Ukrainian vein.

AI's growing role in information warfare

This is the latest in a series of recent cases in which Russian disinformation outlets have used generative AI against Poland and Ukraine. Deepfakes purporting to show statements by Ukrainian military commanders, aimed at damaging Polish-Ukrainian relations, have already been exposed before. The ease of generating realistic faces, voices and settings has drastically cut the cost of producing such material, while detecting the forgeries requires increasingly specialized analytical tools that are out of reach for the average social media user.

For Polish social media users, this carries a practical lesson: videos of purported soldiers criticizing Poland's allies, posted by anonymous accounts with no official verification, should raise suspicion, especially when they present extreme political views delivered in a military uniform. Neither the spokesperson for Poland's Ministry of National Defense nor the Polish Armed Forces command has confirmed the existence of the people shown in the material.

The case has also fed into a broader discussion about Poland's information resilience in the face of hybrid warfare. Platforms such as Meta, TikTok and YouTube say they have policies for labeling and removing misleading AI-generated content, but enforcement against coordinated foreign campaigns remains limited, and removing some accounts doesn't stop videos that have already spread from continuing to circulate.