By Olha Hembik | 2026-02-04

Poland is moving to tighten enforcement against online hate speech, declaring a tougher stance on xenophobia, intolerance and harassment based on nationality or religion -- abuse that has increasingly targeted Ukrainians.

In January, Waldemar Żurek, Poland's justice minister and prosecutor general, announced the creation of specialized prosecutorial units to investigate crimes motivated by nationality and religion. The units will also pursue cases involving hate speech and the promotion of totalitarian propaganda, an effort officials say is increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence and deepfakes make online abuse harder to detect and prosecute.

"Dedicated units will specialize in prosecuting people for inciting hatred. . . . It does not matter if the victims are Ukrainians, Jews, Roma or Polish citizens who hold different views," Żurek said, as cited by OKO.press. "We will prosecute every offender."

Dozens of trained public prosecutors from all 16 regional prosecutor's offices and from Warsaw will staff the effort. The Warsaw-Praga District Public Prosecutor's Office will coordinate the work, provide specialized training and lead complex investigations.

Poland records about 1,500 to 1,700 cases of online incitement to hatred each year, most of them in Warsaw. OKO.press reported that many of those cases are quietly dropped before reaching court. Justice Ministry officials say the new structure, focused training and experience-sharing, aims to change that pattern and push cases through to prosecution.

Hate as content

For activists who track online abuse, the announcement is a long-overdue shift.

"Hell begins under every post that is related to Ukraine or Ukrainians,” Wojciech Warchoł, a Polish activist who reports hate speech on Facebook to prosecutors, told Kontur.

Warchoł has initiated four criminal cases against specific individuals, all of which are now under review. He said prosecutors often regard such cases as low priority, but he deliberately selects incidents that are legally difficult to dismiss.

"The penalty for them is usually three to five years in prison," he said.

In his view, Poland already has sufficient legal tools to punish what he described as "pseudopatriotism" and online hate, but enforcement remains uneven. He argued that penalties should be tougher and applied more consistently to deter repeat offenders.

Lawyer Dawid Dehnert, whose practice includes representing Ukrainians targeted online, has documented similar patterns. Ukrainians regularly seek his help after being insulted because of their origin. Too often complaints are ignored or formally dismissed, he said on his Facebook page.

Dehnert noted that a sense of impunity allowed hate speech to become online "content" used to "gain subscribers and political capital."

"For too long hate speech, especially against Ukrainians, did not get the reaction it should have in Poland," he said.

A key obstacle, Dehnert argued, has been limited institutional experience. Police and prosecutors often lacked the technical knowledge needed to investigate online crimes, particularly when it came to obtaining data from international platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

"The result was that cases were dropped due to 'failure to establish the identity of the perpetrator,'" he said. Specialized units could significantly speed up proceedings.

Attempts to intimidate

Beyond individual abuse, organized disinformation campaigns have increasingly targeted pro-Ukrainian groups.

Activists with the Stand with Ukraine foundation and the Euromaidan-Warsaw initiative say they have faced sustained harassment and coordinated attacks by Russian trolls. In a September 2025 Facebook post, the groups said attackers created fake profiles on X while posing as their organizations.

The strategy involved gaining trust through false accounts and then publishing fabricated statements and stories in volunteers' names.

"These attacks are not random. This is an attempt to undermine our authority and intimidate people who for many years have been joining in efforts to help Ukraine," the group said.

Russian trolls and online haters focus their efforts squarely on Ukrainians. Natalia Panchenko, a rights activist and a leader of Poland's Ukrainian diaspora, said Ukrainians themselves pushed authorities to take hate speech more seriously.

Panchenko has repeatedly been targeted with fabricated quotes and deepfake videos herself.

"[T]here were a bunch of hateful comments and death threats. All these incidents were reported to the appropriate agencies, and the investigations are ongoing," she told Kontur.

She expressed cautious optimism that the Justice Ministry's plan would lead to tangible change.

"When you don't respond to hate, it becomes the norm. Then real violence comes," Panchenko said.

Not free speech

Researchers who monitor online discourse say the problem is broader than overt slurs or threats.

Ada Tymińska, a rights activist with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland, studies anti-Ukrainian hate speech on Polish social networks. She divides it into two categories: openly aggressive posts often linked to Russian propaganda, and more subtle narratives tied to economic anxiety, competition in the labor market and access to public services.

"Voices are more radicalized online. There aren't enough people who would stand up and say that the new people -- the Ukrainians -- don't pose any threat to Polish society," Tymińska told Kontur. She warned that radical politicians exploit that silence and urged journalists and officials to foster a sense of shared community rather than amplify fear.

Dehnert stressed that hate speech should not be conflated with free expression. He described it as a real harm that can escalate into physical violence, arguing that consistent prosecution is a matter of public safety, not censorship.

Similar specialized prosecutorial units already operate in countries including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, Spain, France, Georgia and Cyprus, according to OKO.press.

Poland's new units have been formally approved, and officials say they could begin work as early as February.