Donald Tusk did not present proof of the claim, while being branded a “pathological liar” by his political rivals

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has accused his political opponents of receiving support from an “army of Russian bots” amid an escalating constitutional crisis in Warsaw. The pro-EU leader offered no proof for his claim, which came after a government-backed judge moved to oust two key officials supported by his rival, right-wing President Karol Nawrocki, from the Constitutional Tribunal, triggering public outrage.

Unrest erupted on Friday when Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, a judge elected by Tusk’s governing majority, ordered the suspension of Constitutional Tribunal President Bogdan Swieczkowski and his deputy Bartlomiej Sochanski, both linked to the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. The tribunal’s existing leadership rejected the suspensions, declaring that all those participating in the attempted takeover “are committing the crime of a coup d’état.”

The development triggered street protests around the court building and a heavy police deployment. Nawrocki, who canceled a planned trip to Senegal, personally pushed his way into the tribunal to confront Korwin-Piotrowska and her allies, telling them that “you are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal.”

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In a televised address on Saturday evening, Tusk scrambled to defend his actions, accusing his rivals of “seeking to destroy democracy and the rule of law.” The Polish PM, a strong supporter of EU integration who served as president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019, has long criticized PiS judicial reforms – which he said undermined judges’ independence – as well as Nawrocki’s refusal to administer the oath to five Constitutional Tribunal judges elected by the current parliamentary majority.

“Is it greed, stupidity or treason?” Tusk asked, claiming that the opposition was receiving support from “pro-Russian forces worldwide.”

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“In this conflict, they’re using an army of Russian bots online. In fact, they’ve even received public compliments from the Kremlin’s chief ideologue,” the prime minister claimed, without providing further proof or elaborating.

Moscow has repeatedly said it does not interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs. While Russian officials have yet to respond to Tusk’s allegation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in July denied that Russia was responsible for cyberattacks on Polish energy infrastructure.

Responding to Tusk’s address, the president’s chief of staff, Zbigniew Bogucki, called the prime minister a “pathological liar” and accused him of setting Poland ablaze while pretending to extinguish the fire. “It’s hard to find a single word, expression, or sentence that would be true, that would reflect the actual or legal reality,” he added.

Tusk’s accusation comes after several Western media outlets, anti-Russia hawks, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky propagated the claim that Kiev’s drone strikes, which damaged several data centers operated by Russian technology giant Yandex, crippled alleged Russian bot networks supporting Western right-wing movements, including Germany’s AfD and US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

However, several independent investigations by cybersecurity and research firms quickly debunked the narrative. Experts in particular pointed out that one viral graph supposedly showing a collapse in AfD-related activity was found to contain fabricated or unverifiable figures.

Commenting on the chaos, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described it as a “constitutional coup.” He suggested that “Brussels’ protégé Tusk” was persecuting PiS conservatives over the latter’s hostility toward Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. Medvedev concluded by sarcastically invoking an old schoolyard joke, saying, “And these are the people who scold my brother and me for picking our noses.”