It was not just Poland’s airspace that Russia entered earlier this week. It was cyberspace, too.

Poland’s cyber chiefs held emergency meetings on Wednesday and Thursday after Russian drones entered the country’s airspace in the early hours of Wednesday morning — leading it to scramble fighter jets and invoke NATO’s Article 4.

By Wednesday morning, an analysis center within the country’s national research institute, NASK, had noticed increased levels of disinformation, which it attributed to Russian and Belarusian “services.” 

Poland published detailed explanations of the disinformation it had identified being spread on social media and news channels — exposing how Russia coupled a disinformation campaign with its physical intrusions into NATO territory, and the subsequent fallout.

Some of the identified narratives included that Ukraine allowed the drones to pass into Polish airspace to drag Poland into the war, the incident was a “theater” orchestrated by Kyiv and Warsaw, that Belarus warned Poland of the incoming drones and even that the Polish army was preparing to attack Belarus.

The aim of the disinformation, Poland said, was to redirect responsibility for the violation of airspace from Russia to Ukraine and to portray the Polish army and security services as weak and confused.

The public should “exercise extreme caution” when it comes to publicly-shared information, especially on social media, Poland’s digital ministry said — warning people not to “give in to emotions,” particularly when they see videos or photos. Successful disinformation feeds on people’s heightened emotions, research has found.

Posts pushing these narratives and others have garnered millions of views, the ministry said Thursday. Its security services are providing verified information to the public on an “ongoing basis.”