Fake video of a “drunk Ukrainian on a bus in Poland”
A doctored video is circulating in the Polish segment of social media, allegedly showing a shirtless intoxicated Ukrainian man loudly playing russian music and drinking alcohol on a city bus.
▫️ Posts featuring the video are accompanied by outraged comments in Polish claiming that Ukrainians “behave in Poland as if they were at home” and that local residents are powerless against such “boorish behavior.”
In reality, the video is fabricated. It first appeared online in early June 2026. The original footage carried the russian-language caption “convicts listening to music”, and the incident took place in the russian city of Yaroslavl.
▫️ Several details in the footage also confirm its russian origin: the events take place on a MAZ bus, a model commonly used in russian cities, and russian tricolor flags are clearly visible through the window.
▫️ Through this fabricated video, russian propaganda seeks to inflame anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland following a real incident that occurred on July 11 in the Polish city of Bielsko-Biała, where a man verbally abused, threatened, and insulted two 12-year-old Ukrainian girls on a city bus. The video of that incident gained widespread attention in the Polish-speaking segment of social media and sparked extensive public discussion.
An unusually high level of activity by russian bot networks has been detected in posts about the incident. In particular, bots spread claims that the Ukrainian girls had allegedly “provoked” the man. However, after reviewing the full CCTV footage, the Bielsko-Biała Municipal Transport Authority officially refuted these false claims.
The appearance of the fake “drunk Ukrainian” video marks another phase of russia’s large-scale information operation aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian-Polish relations, which the Center has previously documented.
