HS analysis Belarus’s hybrid influence is recognized, but Poland gets its own propaganda through 6-0

First facts.

Thousands of migrants have come from the Middle East to Belarus, from where they are crossing the border into Poland and further into Europe. Poland will not let them into the country, and at least hundreds of people will be camping in a thin border zone near Kuźnica. The temperature at the Polish border is close to zero and below. There are also small children in the camps.

The situation at the border is therefore difficult. The President of Belarus is to blame Alexander Lukashenko, which has been flying migrants to the borders of its neighbors since the summer.

Lukashenko is thus seeking to lift sanctions. He has received them because he refuses to acknowledge the result of his presidential election, which he lost last year.

“This is a hybrid campaign organized by Belarus against Poland and the EU,” said the Polish president. Andrzej Duda said.

President Duda is right. But it is not just the Belarusian hybrid operation that is under way. Poland also wants to keep the narrative in its hands.

It is in the interests of Poland – or at least its populist ruling party – that the situation on the border is shown as dramatically as possible. This will allow Poland to act as an outpost for the masses of migrants entering the EU.

Poland says it has sent as many as 17,000 troops, police and border guards to the border region. The ratio is considerable compared to the fact that, according to Poland’s own statement, there were about 3,000 migrants in the Kuźnica region on Tuesday; Elsewhere in Belarus, according to Poland, there are about 10,000 others.

Even if the figures are roughly correct, we are far from shaking the whole of Europe. That would be about one percent of the 2015 crisis, when more than a million migrants and asylum seekers arrived in Europe.

Situation is not resolving, and the number of planes flying from the Middle East to Minsk is not declining, but vice versa.

At the same time that Belarus is bragging about the situation of the migrants it has put at risk, Poland is creating its own narrative.

News agency BTI stopped using official photographs from the border zone transmitted by Belarus, although no others are available. But there is no border on the Polish side.

Poland does not allow journalists, aid organizations or EU officials into the border area. Journalists who visited the border area have been arrested and prosecuted.

In the Reporters Without Borders Index on Freedom of Expression, Poland has dropped 46 places in six years to 64th place.

Europe is therefore dependent on Poland’s own information. When was the last time there was a crisis in the middle of Europe that the independent media could not follow?

A lot has changed since 2015.

At the time, social media algorithms were still rampant. The more polarized the content, the wider it spread. The logic benefited both platforms and false mediums: the more clicks, the more money moved.

And a million immigrants are indeed polarizing. Fake mediums also rose in Finland.

Facebook has reduced the weight of polarizing material and Twitter has tightened its line into fake accounts.

Now their means are in use in Poland at the official level. On Monday, the Polish Ministry of Defense released a video clip of migrants tearing barbed wire on the Belarusian side to enter the border zone as Polish soldiers stood blocked.

The angle of view creates the impression of a large number of immigrants but also that an effective angle of view has been carefully sought.

What was the situation really like? We cannot know that because there is no reliable independent footage of the situation.

Hybrid operations it is not worth thinking ingeniously as a scripted reality TV in which the transmissions are counted far ahead. Rather, the operations confuse the soup. As chaos thickens, anything can happen.

Belarus is in a desperate situation. Lukashenko doesn’t have much to lose because he won’t get out of sanctions as long as he stays in office.

Poland, which is at the forefront of the EU, is battling the EU elsewhere. The fate of billions of corona subsidies is unclear, as the independence of the Polish judiciary is at stake.

Poland is also internally divided, and the ruling party PiS is struggling for its position.

Read more: The EU ordered Poland to pay a fine of one million euros a day for violations of the rule of law

Eventually pictures of the border region are a message to the EU’s populist parties – and to the more moderate parties that fear them.

The EU has already bowed once and in practice outsourced Mediterranean border controls to Turkey. Can Poland blackmail the EU in the same way?

Tightening does not seem necessary. Poland has received its message handsomely.

Human rights organizations say those who have crossed the border into Poland are returning to Belarus. Poland recently adopted a law that would allow this, even if it is in conflict with the treaties. Poland is being criticized by human rights organizations and the European Commission is investigating the matter.

Poland has still received almost unreserved support from Europe. President of the European Council Charles Michel visited the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawieckin as a guest in Warsaw on Wednesday. “Poland, which is in a serious crisis, deserves solidarity and the unity of the European Union,” Michel said.