On Friday, PAP was targeted by hackers, who sent out a fake report through the agency claiming that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had announced a partial mobilization of 200,000 men who were going to be sent to Ukraine.

The report was soon after canceled by PAP but was re-released minutes later. The second release was also canceled.

“We already have initial information confirmed on how the attack on the Polish Press Agency was carried out,” said the digital affairs minister Krzysztof Gawkowski. “It was planned and executed over a longer period of time.

“In the attack, malware was to hack the accounts of one of PAP employees. The malware was designed to capture passwords and later to publish false information,” he continued.

Gawkowski added that “the Internal Security Agency and other services are preparing a report.”

He assured that “PAP is already safe,” adding that the agency’s systems are being checked in case someone tries to “repeat an incident like yesterday’s.”

The minister also said all indications show that the attack “originated from the Russian side.”

“Russian services are carrying out a broad campaign as part of the destabilization of European Union countries before the elections to the European Parliament,” he said.

Following the attack, PAP’s liquidator Marek Błoński and PAP's editor-in-chief Wojciech Tumidalski wrote in a joint statement that necessary procedures had been launched immediately after the incident and that the previous attack’s strategy had been “identified and blocked.”