At the end of August 2025, media and Telegram channels reported new rules for entry into Poland for residents of Ukraine - at checkpoints they were allegedly asked to undress and were examined for tattoos with nationalist symbols. We have verified the accuracy of this news.
Photos of a notice allegedly installed on the Ukrainian-Polish border circulated on August 27. The announcement states that those entering from Ukraine will face additional inspection - they need to undress and unlock their phones, and checkpoint officers will look for symbols of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Many Telegram channels clarified that we are talking about searching for appropriate tattoos.
The new inspection rules were announced "RIA Novosti", Lenta.ru, Vesti.ru, "Real time", as well as the TV channel NTV. Publications on this topic appeared in Telegram channels Shot (382,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Evil proof"(212,000), "Uncle Slava"(189,000), "Putin on Telegram"(165,000), "Truthfulness"(163,000), Colonelcassad (159,000), "Russian bun and green stick"(127,000), etc.
After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, Poland became one of the main countries accepting Ukrainian refugees. As of February 2025, almost 1 million people entered this country, with a total of valid residence permits was 1.55 million Ukrainians. In the last one and a half to two years, sociological surveys fixthat the initially friendly attitude of local residents towards refugees from Ukraine began to deteriorate. This was also noticeable during the recent election campaign ahead of the Polish presidential elections - all the main candidates offered limit previously introduced benefits for Ukrainians.
As a result, conservative Karol Nawrocki was elected head of state. In August, a few days after his inauguration, a concert by the Belarusian performer Max Korzh took place at the stadium in Warsaw, where several spectators brought flags of OUN and UPA. The incident outraged a large part of Polish society, including the country's new president, he suggested bring people displaying such symbols to criminal liability. At the end of the month Nawrocki announced bill: according to it, “Bandera” symbols will be equated with communist and Nazi ones, the demonstration of which in Poland has already prohibited. It was not specified which “Bandera” symbols we are talking about.
Although the bill is still at the discussion stage, it was against the backdrop of news about Navrotsky’s initiative that photographs of two advertisements appeared at the checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Polish border. The first photo shows a large poster on a lattice fence, with a turnstile nearby, reminiscent of a land border crossing. The text is written exclusively in Ukrainian.
Despite the fact that the design of the poster resembles real notices at border checkpoints, the text is written with errors. For example, instead of the Ukrainian word “look around”, the Russian word “inspection” is used, and “rozdyagnutisya” (“undress”) is misspelled (“rozignutisya”). Moreover, at checkpoints the text of the announcement is usually duplicated in at least the languages of two bordering countries, as well as in English (in this case it is not specified that the check is carried out exclusively in relation to citizens of Ukraine, which could explain the use of only the Ukrainian language).
As a rule, changes in border crossing rules are reported by official departments (for example, border service) and diplomatic missions of foreign states (for example, Ukrainian Embassy in Warsaw). However, on their websites and verified pages on social networks there is no information that additional inspection has been introduced at the Polish-Ukrainian border. At the same time, on the Polish Border Guard Facebook page there is fast, in which the distributed image is called a fake. The department clarified that the photo was taken at the Grebenne checkpoint and that in fact there is a notice about the rules for using the toilet at this place. The Border Guard Service of Ukraine also statedthat the image is fake.
“Verified” managed to find the original viral image. It actually shows the rules for using the toilet at the Grebenna checkpoint. Photo back in August 2023 posted on Google Maps user Svetlana Khristenko.
As for the photograph of the second similar advertisement, it was printed on an A4 sheet and pasted to the window. There are no identifying marks on it to indicate where exactly the photo was taken. However, the design of the ad is exactly the same as what is shown in the doctored photo. Grammatical errors in the text in Ukrainian also migrated into it.
Both messages about the new rules for screening Ukrainians and photographs of advertisements illustrating them were distributed mainly in Russian. The earliest publication about this that "Verified" found is appeared in the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Kryminforum” on August 26 at 14:48 Moscow time. This resource is regularly meets in analyzes “Verified” as the primary source of fake news, including created according to the same principle: the content of a real ad from a photo on Google Maps is changed using a photo editor.
Thus, the news about Polish border guards who have recently been looking for OUN and UPA symbols on the bodies and phones of people leaving Ukraine is based on two fake photographs. The border agencies of both countries have confirmed that such additional inspections are not carried out.
Cover photo: social networks
- "Gvara Media". Fake. Polish border guards check Ukrainians for the presence of OUN-UPA symbols
- "BBC Russian Service". Murders in Volyn: a historical stumbling block between Poland and Ukraine
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- Is it true that Ukraine asked Poland to rename one of the streets of Warsaw in honor of Stepan Bandera?
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