For an EU election, Poland's is a lot about Russia.

In one video advocating the highest possible turnout at the polling stations on June 9, a group of people is being herded at gunpoint to an armoured vehicle that drives them into an isolated place where they are forced out,  to find themselves surrounded by armed men in non-descript uniforms.

A man addresses the people – in Russian. “Do you think it’s not about you? That you don’t need to be involved?” he tells them.

“Well, scumbags…” the man says while his troops begin aiming their guns at the terrified people.

But one woman raises her hand defiantly, holding a pen. Others follow suit, baffling the hostile troops. “We’re not going to give Europe away,” the video says.

Livin’ on the edge

The Akcja Demokracja video sums up the dominant mood of the EU vote next weekend well. As news multiplies about Russian provocations, disinformation, and sabotage – cue a fire that destroyed one of Warsaw's biggest shopping centres earlier this month – many Poles are on edge.

For the first time in over three decades, Poland’s eastern borders are at their most vulnerable. 

Russia’s heavily militarised Kaliningrad region to the north and Russia’s ally Belarus to the east make for a combined 650-km long stretch of utmost concern now that another neighbour – Ukraine – has been bombed daily for over two years now on the orders of the Kremlin. 

Poland’s fellow EU member states that border on Russia – Finland, and the Baltic States – are all boosting their border defence capabilities.

Tension has grown even more in Poland since the movement of migrants along the border with Belarus - orchestrated by Minsk, Poland says – has intensified in recent weeks.

The campaign is not alleviating the fears much. If anything, it has fuelled them.

Fortress Poland

The government has all but hijacked the run-up to the vote by mooting a PLN10bn (€2.4bn) defence plan, dubbed “East Shield”, which will see Poland’s borders with Belarus and Russia reinforced by anti-tank “dragons’ teeth” and trenches put in place between the region’s thick forests and swamps.

After a border guard was reportedly stabbed by a migrant at the Polish-Belarusian border earlier this week, the government is reinstating a no-go zone along a roughly 3-5 km-wide belt along the border as of June 4. 

The restrictions will be in place for an initial period of 90 days, covering the entire summer and thus the peak of the tourist season. This spells trouble for the region’s economy.

But the logic of political campaigning in Poland since last October is unrelenting. 

Prime Minister Donald Tusk is touting the vote as a choice between Poland in Europe and Poland exposed and vulnerable to a hybrid, or even a hot, war with Russia. The fiery debate about the EU’s Green Deal – a set of measures to address the climate crisis that inspired farmer protests – is but a faint echo now.

“We are one step away from pro-Russian forces openly starting to gain the upper hand in Europe,” Tusk told an election rally in Bialystok, a key city in Poland’s north-east, just under 100 km from the Belarusian border.

“The history of Poland in the coming years, or maybe decades, will largely depend on what the authorities in the EU will look like,” Tusk also said.

EU’s climate diktat

The choice seems quite the opposite for the biggest opposition party, the until-recently ruling Law and Justice (PiS). Not mentioning Russia, PiS tells its voters that the future composition of the European Parliament and the European Commission will determine whether Poland ends up “poor” and with its economy “destroyed” by the Green Deal. 

“It is in our hands to stop the dictatorial tendencies of the European Commission,” former PiS PM Beata Szydło wrote on X.

Latching onto PiS’ anti-EU message, Tusk has been painting PiS as nearly open agents of Russia, who are seeking to weaken the EU just as it is beginning to get its act together on better-sustained support for Ukraine.

Critics of the government have said that Tusk is covering up the shortcomings of his government – in office since mid-December – with aggressive campaign rhetoric for an election that does not matter much to most Poles.

Indeed, the turnout in EU votes in Poland has traditionally been low. Except for the 2019 election, turnout has never been more than 25%.

A low turnout will likely favour PiS with its more disciplined electorate,  which is what drives Tusk to make the voting about PiS and Russia rather than anything focused on the EU. Tusk's voters would likely consider most EU-focussed issues lukewarm and not worth the effort.

At an average of 30.5%, Tusk’s centrist party, the Civic Platform, is virtually on a par with PiS at an average of 30.9% in May polls, according to wybory.eu, a Polish poll results aggregator.

Civic Platform’s coalition partners, the conservative Third Way and the Left, averaged 10.4% and 8.7%, respectively, in May. The far-right anti-EU Konfederacja is at 8.7%.

The EU vote in Poland could also change the momentum in domestic politics.

A good result by PiS will give the party stamina less than a year before the presidential election which will be a make-or-break event for the Tusk government, currently slowed down by President Andrzej Duda, a stalwart PiS ally who cannot stand again.

A government-friendly president could, in turn, be a body blow for PiS if the party is left without any key centre of power.