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NATO fighter jets downed at least 19 Russian drones, which had entered Polish airspace on the night of Tuesday, 9 September, to Wednesday, 10 September.
This has led to a disinformation campaign emerging online, peddling a pro-Russian narrative and casting doubt over the events.
This war of narratives has been further intensified since Poland’s State Protection Service revealed that it neutralised a drone operating over government buildings in the capital, Warsaw, on Monday, 15 September.
Across social media platforms, pro-Russian accounts have alleged that the damage caused by a drone, which crashed into a house in Wyryki-Wola, a village located in eastern Poland, was in fact due to a prior storm.
On X, one pro-Russian account, which also has a Telegram channel, claimed that the house “was heavily damaged during a storm two months ago and its condition has not changed since then”.
The post, which has been viewed more than 140,000 times, was signed off with “- FRWL” — an acronym which stands for “From Russia with Love.”
Other online users, including a far-right TikTok activist, called the story of the destroyed house “fake news”.
In fact, the house was damaged by a drone, or debris from the drone, according to local authorities, so not by a storm. Meanwhile, locals are reported to have seen Polish fighter jets in the air.
Wyryki-Wola residents Alicja and Tomasz Wesolowski told Reuters they were watching TV in their living room when their house was impacted, destroying their roof and damaging one of their bedrooms.
Polish authorities have labelled the drone incursion into its airspace as “a deliberate Russian provocation”, aimed at testing NATO’s aerial capabilities.
NATO has not stated whether the incursion was deliberate or not, caveating that “whether or not Russia’s actions were deliberate, Russia violated NATO airspace”.
Poland has rejected United States President Donald Trump’s assertion that the drone incursion “could have been a mistake”.
The Kremlin has responded by accusing Warsaw of spreading “myths” about Poland’s drone incursion, to aggravate “the Ukrainian crisis”—referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
Questions around the might of Gerbera drones
The drone incursion was conducted at least in part with Russian multi-purpose Gerbera drones, according to a Polish army official. This has led online users to spread of online disinformation about their destructive power in a bid to discredit the incursion.
On X, one account that regularly spreads pro-Russian propaganda alleged that Gerbera drones “barely have any weight, they’re from styrofoam and are built to simulate a big drone. They themselves don’t do much damage, just some when they fall down”.
Speaking to Euronews’ verification team, David Bacci, a senior researcher in aerodynamics from the University of Oxford, explained that “Russia uses Gerbera drones because they are cheap and inexpensive to manufacture”.
“You can load these drones with something like 10kg of explosives. They don’t inflict massive damage on tactical and military assets, but they can destroy a civilian house.
“They can be launched from anywhere by an elastic or pneumatic catapult, which is a kind of device that you can assemble in a truck,” said Bacci.
Drones such as the Gerbera not only saturate air radars, but are also very expensive to deal with.
“You may use a combat aircraft to shoot down a drone; however, a typical air-to-air missile costs between $300,000 (around €254,000) and even $1 million (€850,000). So you are spending this much to shoot something that costs $10,000 to make,” Bacci added.
Fake claims that Ukraine and Poland orchestrated the drone incursion
Another claim circulating online purports that Ukraine coordinated the drone incursion on 10 September with Poland, with online users branding the drones as “false flag” devices.
Polish far-right former MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke took to X to chime in on another pro-Russian narrative, arguing that Gerbera drones were “most probably” launched from “Ukrainian territory”, in an apparent bid to imply that Ukraine was behind the incursion.
To back up his claim, Korwin-Mikke argued that the “maximum range” of Gerbera drones was 600km, in a bid to justify why these drones could not have originated from Russia.
“The maximum operative range of Gerbera drones is roughly 600 kilometres, which can go down to even 300 kilometres, depending on how you load them up. The more you load these drones, the less endurance they will have,” David Bacci told EuroVerify.
“Many people confuse the operative range with the endurance. The operative range is based on a return distance. So if I tell you that a drone’s operative range is 600km, this means 600km out and 600km back. However, if you launch these drones, but you don’t want them to return, the total range they can travel doubles to 1,200km,” he added.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has rejected claims that Ukraine was behind the drone incursion as disinformation, stating “the information gathered by Poland clearly indicates that the Russian Federation bears full responsibility for the violation of Polish airspace”.
This disinformation fits into a wider narrative which alleges that the drone incursion was staged as part of Poland’s supposed desire to justify sending troops to Ukraine.
Former Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke also alleged that Tusk and Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski are “striving for a war at all costs”.
Accounts spreading these false claims have also taken advantage of a series of contradictory media reports about Poland and Ukraine’s military cooperation.
On 11 September, Polish media reported that Poland would send military representatives to Ukraine for training on how to combat drones. These claims triggered a brief public backlash, given that only a week prior, Tusk had asserted that Polish troops would not be sent to Ukraine.
But the following day, Poland’s Ministry of Defence clarified Ukrainian and Polish specialists would practice the use of drones and anti-drone systems on Polish territory.
“There is currently increased disinformation activity carried out by Russian and Belarusian services. Its main purpose is to shift responsibility for the violation of Polish airspace to Ukraine and to discredit the actions taken by the Polish military and security services,” stated Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs in a statement.
