Russian state agencies have seized on migration proposals by Poland’s former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki to promote misleading claims about Ukrainians and inflame tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv.
On 20 August 2026, TASS and RIA Novosti highlighted Morawiecki’s suggestions for a dedicated deportation service and an “immigrant account” system, using the proposals to advance separate but connected narratives. The Polish publication Polityka reported on the Russian coverage.
Selective focus on Ukrainians
TASS concentrated on the proposed deportation service, while RIA Novosti placed the emphasis on Ukrainians. The Russian agency claimed that Ukrainian citizens made up a “majority” of those deported from Poland, although Morawiecki did not make that assertion.
The claim distorts the official figures. During the first half of 2026, Ukrainian citizens were the largest single national group among people deported from Poland, with 1,688 cases. They represented 29.3 per cent of the total 5,768 deportations, compared with 9 per cent during the same period a year earlier.
That made Ukrainians the biggest individual group, but not a majority. More than 70 per cent of those deported were citizens of other countries, including Georgia, Belarus, Colombia and Moldova. The distinction is central: presenting the largest separate group as the majority gives a false impression of the scale and character of Ukrainian migration in Poland.
Figures stripped of their wider context
The rise in the Ukrainian share, from 9 per cent to 29.3 per cent, has been used by Russian propaganda as evidence of an exceptional problem linked specifically to Ukrainian migration. The available figures do not support that conclusion.
Instead, the increase took place as Poland generally strengthened migration controls, amid a political debate about reforming the system. The change in the proportion of Ukrainians among deportees therefore needs to be read alongside the total number of deportations and the nationalities of everyone affected, rather than treated as an isolated measure of Ukrainian behaviour.
Polish Border Guard data also do not identify Ukrainians as the dominant group among people breaching migration rules. By selecting one statistic and removing the broader distribution from view, the Russian reports created a much more sweeping picture than the underlying data allow.
This is the mechanism behind the information attack: a genuine shift in one category is presented as proof of a wider national failure. The fact that Ukrainians moved into first place among deportees is retained, while the figures showing that they remained a minority are omitted or displaced.
A pressure point in Polish-Ukrainian relations
The coverage gives Russian state media an opportunity to turn a domestic Polish policy discussion into a dispute centred on Ukrainians. Morawiecki’s proposals concerned migration policy, including new administrative tools and enforcement structures. They did not establish that Ukrainians were responsible for most deportations, nor did they provide the basis for RIA Novosti’s claim.
By directing attention towards Ukrainians, rather than reporting the full statistics, the agencies encourage the impression that Poland faces a problem caused predominantly by Ukrainian nationals. That framing fits a broader Kremlin information pattern: using selected facts to spread anti-Ukrainian narratives and worsen relations between Poland and Ukraine.
The episode also shows why migration statistics are particularly vulnerable to manipulation. A percentage can rise sharply even when it describes only one part of a wider total, and the label “largest group” can be quietly transformed into “majority”. Without the denominator and the figures for other nationalities, readers are left with a conclusion the data do not justify.
Poland’s debate over migration reform will continue to generate politically charged proposals, but the immediate information battle is over how those proposals and the deportation figures are interpreted. The next challenge will be whether public discussion remains anchored in the complete statistics or is driven by selective claims designed to deepen mistrust between the two neighbouring countries.
How should Poland’s political debate respond when accurate migration figures are recast by foreign state media to intensify tensions with Ukraine?
