In a clearing in a forest, two men stand behind a row of wooden poles that have pictures of faces stuck on top of them.
The portraits include US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. In front of them hangs the US flag.
The men are wearing camouflage clothing with blue markings – the colour often worn by Ukrainian soldiers to identify them on the battlefield.
“We don’t need allies like you,” one of the men says in Ukrainian, as he sets fire to the flag and portraits.
But this video, shared with thousands of subscribers of a Polish-language Telegram channel, is staged. The uniforms are generic camouflage ones easily bought online, while the Ukrainian words are heavily mispronounced and spoken with a strong Russian accent.
It was shared on the Telegram channel Polska Grupa Informacyjna, one of 22 Polish-language channels, with more than 150,000 subscribers between them, that the has identified as sharing various forms of pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda.
Telegram is not widely used in Poland, but experts say false messages on it are amplified among extremist groups and then spread on to other platforms that have a bigger reach.
The 22 channels largely present themselves as Polish news and information services. Two claim to be “impartial” while one promises “unbiased” news. One channel bills itself as offering “reliable and verified information hidden from the public”, while another has the slogan “we are where the truth is needed”.
Most of them frequently cite or replicate content from Russian state media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, which have been banned in the European Union for manipulating information and spreading propaganda. Poland is a member of the EU.
The channels often quote or link to Russian regime figures and supporters. President Vladimir Putin, deputy head of the national security council Dmitry Medvedev, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Russian propagandist TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and pro-Russian war commentators known as “Z-bloggers” are all cited.
Some posts on these channels include outright false information. For example, an image posted by the channel UKR LEAKS_pl shows figures in military clothing applying fake blood to people and is captioned “how the ‘Bucha victims’ were prepared”, implying that the well-documented killings of hundreds of Ukrainians by Russian forces in 2022 did not happen.
Some channels frequently refer to Ukrainian leaders and soldiers as “Nazis”. In one post, InfoDefensePOLAND called the government in Kyiv a “Nazi regime”, claiming it was “controlled by the United States” and others in the West.