In brief

• The General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces published, then deleted, a post warning that foreign services could use protests and online campaigns to destabilise the country.
• The post described a sequence from identifying social flashpoints to moving people onto streets and amplifying resulting chaos.
• The army said the message was educational and later apologised, stressing that peaceful assembly is a constitutional right.

What the General Staff said

On Monday the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces published a social media post about astroturfing, a term for coordinated influence campaigns designed to look like grassroots civic initiatives (Wojsko kasuje wpis po fali oburzenia. Rzecznik zamieścił wyjaśnienie – Wirtualna Polska) (Wojsko ostrzega przed niebezpiecznym zjawiskiem. Może wyprowadzić ludzi na ulice – Wirtualna Polska). The army said hostile foreign services could exploit social divisions and amplify tensions online, with the aim of destabilising the country (Wojskowi zamieścili komunikat na temat protestów. Rzecznik armii tłumaczy – Onet). It added that such operations could also lead to riots, and that demonstrators might not realise they were being used for a purpose other than their own (Sztab Generalny Wojska Polskiego: Protest może być elementem wrogiej operacji – RMF24).

How the mechanism was described

The post laid out a sequence. Services would first identify social flashpoints, then inflame them through troll farms, bots and coordinated accounts that target extreme emotions on both sides of a dispute. The next step, according to the text, would be physically moving people onto the streets, followed by media and online operations amplifying any chaos that results („Przepraszam za publikację”. Sztab Generalny usunął wpis o wykorzystywaniu protestów – RMF24). The stated goals included overloading emergency services, paralysing decision-making in government and forcing political concessions.

Reaction and removal

Some readers nonetheless took the warning as a comment on the dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal, where protests have been held in recent days. The post was later taken down, and the army published a statement apologising for the publication and stressing that peaceful assemblies are guaranteed by the constitution.

Context

The episode came as the Tribunal dispute escalated. Judges elected by the Sejm appeared at the Tribunal building on Friday, while the court's president and vice-president were placed on leave, and police deployed in large numbers near the protest site.