Hamish Macdonald

So this is not part of the kind of migrant crisis of 2016.

This is in the years after that.

The Poland-Belarus border was never a big entry point during that migrant crisis.

But in subsequent years, as Russia has sought to destabilize the democratic process in Poland...

At particular points in the electoral calendar, they have brought in large groups of migrants and sent them across that border.

At the same time, they have fed into the Polish media and information ecosystem, particularly Polish social media,

videos of migrants coming over the borders, commentary about Muslims coming to build mosques in your community and marry your daughters, steal your wives, to create distrust, disharmony, make people question their democracy.

We went to the border, went out with these activists that go there.

They're not allowed to help the migrants at all.

They'll be done as people smugglers now.

but we walked for hours and hours and hours to a pin drop on a map where these two Afghan guys who had come over this six metre high fence, both very injured, one of them sort of turning septic, who think they're there for a cheap and easy and open pathway to Europe.

They're real humans that have been caught up in this disinformation campaign.

Yeah.

I mean, I reckon probably in some ways we all are feeling versions of this.

Like we feel outrage.

Stuff is designed to trigger something in you, whether it's you looking at a clip on Pauline Hanson late at night or you thinking about climate change.

I think we're all having emotional reactions to what we're seeing.

Like I think we all feel a bit more frayed at the moment.

Like there's a –

Everyone you talk to, certainly in my life, just wishes things would dial down a little bit.