Alongside Deputy Prime Minister Sikorski, the conference was attended by the representatives of the government administration, the academic community, and experts on information security, disinformation, and the state’s resilience to hybrid threats. In his address titled “Europe in the Shadow of War”, the Polish head of diplomacy remarked that Russia wages a full-scale cognitive war against Poland.

From the Kremlin’s perspective it is a war against the West. Against our alliances. A war that aims to destroy the foundations of not only Poland’s, but the entire region’s success.

- said Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski. At the same time, he pointed out how much Russia spends on the propaganda machine. 

In 2025, Russia spent a record sum of 1.4 billion (!) dollars on propaganda. It is over 118 million dollars—that is about half a billion zlotys—a month. Russia has spent a total of six billion dollars on the propaganda apparatus since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

- said Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. 

The head of Polish diplomacy highlighted that Russia has incorporated cognitive warfare into its doctrine and does not conceal its objectives: to sow confusion, weaken the will to resist, and undermine democratic values.

Due to artificial intelligence, running disinformation operations nowadays is cheaper and quicker than ever. The law cannot lag behind technology—it must provide a concrete response to the full spectrum of contemporary digital threats.

- concluded Deputy Prime Minister Sikorski. 

In the opinion of the foreign minister, the Western world needs to respond to this by amending the law adequately, so that it allows for an effective response to the full spectrum of today’s digital threats, including the development of artificial intelligence. In his address, Minister Radosław Sikorski also underlined the threat posed by disinformation on social media, and the importance of cooperating with the younger generation.He gave a positive example of such cooperation, namely the Youth Resilience Council at the MFA. The minister remarked that there should be more initiatives of this sort.

 

For more information on the Youth Resilience Council at the MFA, go to: https://www.gov.pl/web/dyplomacja/iv-posiedzenie-28-kwietnia-2026.

 

Photo: Konrad Laskowski/MFA