By Olha Hembik and AFP | 2024-10-16

WARSAW -- Poland and the Czech Republic on October 9 called for hardening the European Union (EU)'s migration policy and boosting the bloc's external border against externally orchestrated migratory pressure.

Both Central European countries have in the past months campaigned for "new ways" to handle irregular migrants and toughening the landmark overhaul of EU migration policies coming into effect from 2026.

"We want to boost the repatriation policy, which is inefficient. We want to step up the combat with smugglers and illegal migration organizers," Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged "very serious debate" on migration during the next summit of the bloc leaders in Brussels.

"Together we have to convince the other partners in the EU, and we will do so, that the task of the EU is to protect the external border and to reduce illegal migration to a minimum," Tusk told reporters in Prague.

The bloc has to be protected "from the wave of illegal migration, increasingly organized by external forces," he said.

Hybrid attacks, cyberwar

Poland is one of the countries on the EU's eastern flank that have been dealing with a migration influx it has described as a "hybrid" attack by Belarus and its ally Russia.

Since summer 2021, thousands of migrants and refugees, mainly from the Middle East, have crossed or attempted to cross the border between Belarus and Poland.

"Every day, thousands of Polish soldiers, policemen, border guards are not guarding but fighting against the pressure organized by the [Alyaksandr] Lukashenka regime [in Belarus]," Tusk said.

Warsaw has accused Moscow of smuggling Africans into Europe by sending them to the Polish border through Belarus.

Poland has earmarked more than €2.3 billion to boost border protection, Tusk announced in May.

Cybersecurity breaches are also increasing in Poland, and the authorities are taking action to suppress them.

Poland registered 370,000 cyberattacks in all of 2023, and 400,000 in just the first half of 2024, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said at a news conference September 9.

This represents a potential 100% increase in such incidents year-on-year, he said.

"Intelligence agencies carried out nearly 100,000 actions to identify the perpetrators of the cyberattacks," Rzeczpospolita quoted Gawkowski as saying.

Polish authorities have discovered saboteurs working for Russian and Belarusian intelligence agencies and have managed to dismantle a group of them, Rczeczpospolita reported.

The foreign criminals sought to infiltrate the cybersecurity field in order to steal information and eventually blackmail individuals and institutions, Gawkowski said.

They intended to wage a de facto cyberwar, he added.

Seeking to paralyze and disrupt

The aim of the Russian and Belarusian cyberattacks is to paralyze Poland politically, militarily and economically, Gawkowski said September 9, according to Zachod.pl.

One of the initial victims of the cyberattack was the Polish Anti-Doping Agency (POLADA). The agency has trained anti-doping specialists and organized anti-doping controls in the country since 2017.

A recent data breach at POLADA "was an element of a broader operational game ... to develop vectors of entry into other Polish institutions -- those at the local government level and those at the level of state-owned companies related to security," Gawkowski said.

Supported by the intelligence agencies of a "hostile state," criminals stole and published on Telegram approximately 250 gigabytes of Polish athletes' confidential data, Rzeczpospolita reported August 11.

On the morning of August 14, an English-language X account began sharing information from the leak, naming various Polish athletes as alleged dopers.

"Info presented in this post about Polish athletes is a fake," POLADA retorted in English on X the same day.

Propaganda war

These hybrid attacks and cybersecurity breaches are part of the Kremlin's larger disinformation strategy, analysts say.

"Russia was the first to understand the nature of a propaganda war in Europe, and that Poland is the country where this war ought to be waged," said Mikhailo Strelnikov, who launched an initiative to build a Museum of Victory over Despotism in Warsaw.

The museum is not yet complete and is raising funds.

"According to independent sources, Russia is spending €1 billion per month on the propaganda war in Europe," Strelnikov told Kontur.

"Until recently, there was a mistaken belief in Poland that the scale of Russian penetration was small," said Dominik Gąsiorowski, a Warsaw-based specialist on countering Russian propaganda.

"However, the outbreak of full-scale war [in Ukraine] showed that the Russians are no longer acting subtly, and it has become easier to identify Russian agents of influence," he told Kontur.

Calling cyberspace a tool used by foreign intelligence agencies to coordinate and organize their various activities in Poland, the country's Interior Ministry in September announced regulatory changes to improve online security.

"Poland must respond to Russian lies with calm, declarations, facts and subsequent assistance to Ukraine," said Piotr Kaszuwara, founder of Fundacja Przyszłość dla Ukrainy (UA Future).

"Ukraine is not only fighting for its own country, people and land, but also protecting us from Kremlin propaganda and the so-called 'Russian world' -- an absolute evil that neither Western society nor Western governments will ever accept," he told Kontur.