In August, Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned during a flight. He was hospitalized in Omsk afterwards and later evacuated to Berlin. Several European laboratories, including French, Swedish and German concluded after their investigation that he was poisoned by a Novichok-class nerve agent. This incident has been largely covered by Russian channels as well as by disinformation websites in Central Europe, which offered numerous speculations or even outright conspiracy theories about the cause of the incident.

The role of Poland in Europe and its national interests have been largely misinterpreted lately on Russian disinformation channels.

The Russian agency Regnum suggested that Poland and Lithuania are “preparing to leave the EU.” They argue that Warsaw and Vilnius “are developing an alternative integration project – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.” According to the source, that is a manifestation of “Polish revisionism in the East.”

On the other hand, an article which appeared on the opednews-com portal, suggests that Poland is in fact planning to annex the territory of Lithuania. According to the author, the polish government is trying to create conditions, in which Lithuania will be politically and militarily dependent on Poland, which will ultimately lead to the unification of Lithuanian territory with Poland under the pretext of uniting efforts against Russia.

Those wild theories about Polish interest are drawn from the context of cooperation within the Lublin Triangle, a new regional initiative signed by the ministers of foreign affairs of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.

However, unification/annexation of Lithuania seems to be only one of the several territorial goals of Poland in recent months. In the beginning of September, the “60 minutes” program broadcasted by Russian public television entertained a discussion where it was stated that Poland intends to annex part of Belarus.

The Russian Federation continues to undermine democratic processes in Eastern European countries, while conducting aggressive disinformation campaigns targeting the EU Member States. Such behaviour will continue unless the costs are raised for the Kremlin.

European allies should significantly harden their approach to personal and financial sanctions against Russian hostilities. Leaders of Russian disinformation efforts should be personally sanctioned, so that each of them understands that conducting hostilities against European democracies has personal consequences.

All European countries should stop legitimising Russian disinformation tools posing as “journalistic platforms”. Communication channels effectively run by the Russian government, be it RT, Sputnik, or Russian state-run TV channels, do not represent journalism, they merely pretend to. Therefore, European countries should not consider them to represent free media; they should ban them from press conferences and not give access that is granted only to journalists, which they are not. This would also send a clear message that working for the Russian government is a one-way street for any journalist. No Western public official should ever legitimise these entities with an interview.