Polish General Staff deletes post warning Constitutional Tribunal protests could serve hostile actors

The post and its warning

On Monday, 2 November, the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces (Sztab Generalny Wojska Polskiego) published a message on X titled 'ASTROTURFING - NIEBEZPIECZNA GRA', or 'astroturfing, a dangerous game'. It carried the hashtags #PsychoOdporni, #DezinfoOdporni and #WalkaKognitywna. The message described how the manipulation of public mood works, a tactic typical of information warfare. It argued that such activity could be used by outside actors to cause real harm to the state, and it warned that genuine social discontent can be exploited for the aims of those actors.

“We know how delicate the line is between a democratic demonstration of social discontent and planned operations carried out by entities hostile to a given country.”

The message appeared while demonstrations were taking place outside the Constitutional Tribunal (Trybunał Konstytucyjny). Niezależna.pl described those protests as opposing a forcible takeover of the institution.

Tensions at the Tribunal

The dispute around the court escalated from Friday, 30 October, into Saturday, 31 October. On Friday evening a statement appeared on the Tribunal's website saying that a break in the official duties of its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and its vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański, had been ordered. The army's post came into that atmosphere. Wpolityce.pl read the episode as a sign that opinions inside the armed forces are divided and that the government was testing whether the military would stay loyal in a deeper political crisis.

Withdrawal and apology

Before noon the post was withdrawn. Niezależna.pl reached the spokesman, Col. Marek Pietrzak, who said he had removed the post after noticing what was happening around it. He said the publication had been prepared well in advance as part of the 'PsychoOdporni' educational line, which the General Staff has run for many months. In his view it was not a comment on current events at the Tribunal. He apologised for the publication and said the message had 'unfortunately' fallen into the situation.

In a separate statement Pietrzak wrote about the protests themselves.

“The right to peaceful assembly is a constitutional right of citizens. Participation in a demonstration alone is not grounds for treating it as part of an influence operation.”

What the post said to look for

The General Staff described a sequence in which hostile services identify flashpoints in society, amplify them through troll farms, bots and coordinated accounts, lead people onto the streets, and then magnify the crisis once unrest begins. It listed the aims of such operations as overloading rescue services and the public's sense of safety, paralysing decision-making, forcing geopolitical concessions and shaping public opinion. Readers were advised to check whether a demonstration turns into verbal or physical violence, whether calls to protest appear suddenly in large volume, whether comments are copied word for word, and whether accounts are newly created with no activity history. The post did not name a specific state or group behind any operation.