Pro-Kremlin disinformation: Research papers

As the 2024 European Parliament elections approach, the erosion of trust in institutions and information sources could undermine the integrity of the electoral process. A primary example is Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has had far-reaching consequences throughout Europe, bringing with it a new set of multidimensional issues. This includes widespread disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining popular support for national and EU policies that support Ukraine. This Discussion Paper focuses on disinformation trends in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in Bulgaria, Germany, and Italy. It looks at the intricacies of misinformation around refugees, military support for Ukraine, and energy-related issues, offering insight into the possible impact on public attitude and electoral dynamics. It also emphasises national and EU initiatives to combat disinformation, underlining the importance of comprehensive plans to build resistance to disinformation and ensure the integrity of future elections.

Le service de vigilance et de protection contre les ingérences numériques étrangères (VIGINUM) a identifié une campagne numérique de manipulation de l’information ayant visé plusieurs États européens depuis septembre 2022, dont la France. Cette campagne de manipulation de l’information, suivie depuis plus d’un an par VIGINUM, a pour objectif de discréditer le soutien occidental à l’Ukraine. Dénommée RRN en raison de la place centrale occupée par le « média » Reliable Recent News, cette campagne s’articule autour de quatre composantes :
- La diffusion de contenus pro-russes liés à la guerre en Ukraine, dénigrant notamment ses dirigeants ;
- L’usurpation de l’identité de sites de médias, mais aussi gouvernementaux, européens, via la technique de typosquatting visant à reproduire leur nom de domaine ;
- La création de sites web d’actualités francophones partageant des contenus polémiques, instrumentalisant l’actualité nationale française ;
- La mise en œuvre de moyens inauthentiques combinés, tels que des faux sites ou des faux comptes sur les réseaux sociaux, permettant de relayer les contenus.

Face à la propagande terroriste et à la désinformation du Kremlin, l'Union européenne fait le choix de promouvoir un discours positif sur ses bienfaits et ses valeurs. Il revient aux institutions de rendre leur fonctionnement et les mesures adoptées accessibles et compréhensibles pour les citoyens

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022 opened a new chapter for Russian propaganda and disinformation targeting Lublin Triangle countries. Ukraine is at the epicentre of Russian disinformation and propaganda that directly supports the events on the battlefield. Lithuania and Poland supporting Ukraine politically and militarily, are also under constant information attacks from Kremlin. Despite that, all three countries are showing vital signs of resilience to Russian propaganda. Thus, the Civic Resilience Initiative, Detector Media and Kosciuszko Institute joint efforts to identify the building blocks of resilience to Russian disinformation in Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.

Ukraine is not just suffering a military invasion from Russia. As part of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare, Ukraine is a target of propaganda and disinformation spread by the Kremlin and other pro-Russian groups. Much of this falsehood is spread via Telegram, a crucial social media network for Ukrainians and Russians following news about the war. With support from Democracy Reporting International, the German Federal Foreign Office and the Eastern Partnership Programme, VoxCheck Ukraine monitored Russian and pro-Russian Telegram channels between 24 February and 15 November 2022. In the various messages and narratives, VoxCheck found 5,576 instances of disinformation.

This Technical Document shows how Telegram operates and can be exploited for disinformative purposes. It is designed as a resource for the community countering disinformation on this platform. The document is structured as follows: (I) first, the organisation of Telegram chats is presented; (II) then, some tools on how to investigate the platform are introduced; (III) and the subject of how to report content is addressed, including an overview of policy aspects related to enforcement. (IV) Finally, a repository of recent case studies on Telegram is provided.

Systematic information manipulation and disinformation have been applied by the Russian government as an operational tool in its assault on Ukraine. The spread of disinformation by the Russian government and aligned actors, as well as the actions taken in response by the Government of Ukraine, allied governments and international organisations, provide an important perspective and lessons on how to counteract false and misleading content.

This Issue Paper examines the challenges posed by disinformation about refugees from Ukraine and the steps taken so far to address them. It analyses the audiences targeted by false and misleading messages, considers why online disinformation about refugees is so pervasive and looks at how disinformation narratives have changed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite some positive actions, much remains to be done to boost Europe’s societal resilience against disinformation. Institutional scrutiny at the EU level is focused on foreign disinformation actors. Counter-disinformation efforts mostly follow a ‘debunking approach’, which may not prevent hostile narratives from shaping the political discourse.

The following text analyzes the main trends in disseminating disinformation in the Czech Republic. It elaborates on prevalent disinformation narratives, defines key vulnerable groups, and highlights policy recommendations based on good practices from Estonia and Denmark.

The research found traces of inauthentic pro-Kremlin activity on Facebook in all countries under review, which can be considered attempts to influence public opinion in the affected states and, in some cases, beyond them. Literally, identical comments are popping up under a multitude of Facebook posts, channelling the Kremlin’s disinformation to users who would never consider to read anything about the war. This is the result of the copy-and-paste activity of trolls who work multiple shifts. Whereas Political Capital’s, and it’s partners’ first research revealed the existence of potentially coordinated “online troll networks” in V4 countries right after the start of the invasion, the new research on the pro-Russian online inauthentic behaviour presented here pinpointed the long-term narratives and coordination strategies used by trolls in the service of the war in Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Romania.

Today, digital communication makes it possible to disseminate information at high speed across borders to more people than ever before, thus generating an enormous reach. This is true for crisis communication by international organisations and peace operations as well as for deliberate and targeted disinformation campaigns by internal conflict parties or external actors. The so-called weaponization of digital communications and social media poses new challenges for identifying and combating hostile influence. How disinformation can intensify conflict is apparent in a variety of countries – including South Sudan 2016, Myanmar 2017 and currently Russia’s war in Ukraine (since February 2022).

The EU’s emerging response to foreign interference, as it is currently debated in the EU Parliament, contains striking similarities to arguments put forth by some governments around the world seeking to justify harsh restrictions on foreign funding and “foreign agents.” This risks producing serious ramifications for civic spaces and international civil society support—both within and beyond the EU.

EU DisinfoLab recently exposed a Russia-based influence operation network that has been operating in Europe since at least May 2022 and is still ongoing. Doppelganger, the name we gave to this campaign, uses multiple “clones” of authentic media (at least 17 media providers, including, Bild, 20minutes, Ansa, The Guardian or RBC Ukraine) and targets users with fake articles, videos and polls. To do so, the malicious actors behind it bought dozens of Internet domain names similar to the ones of authentic media and copied their designs.

Disinformation and misinformation have been amplified in the digital age. In order to combat their increasing presence in our everyday lives, we have to first educate ourselves on what disinformation is. In this article, Jakub Ferencik looks at this question in some detail, primarily by analyzing Vladimir Putin’s usage of disinformation in politics. He first distinguishes between disinformation and misinformation, points to some examples in Putin’s early tenure as the President of Russia, and compares them with the use of disinformation during the pandemic in order to show why people lose trust in traditional media sources. Finally, the author addresses the two most avid producers of Russian disinformation, RT and Sputnik, and briefly discusses why they have become so prominent.

Online misinformation continues to have adverse consequences for society. Inoculation theory has been put forward as a way to reduce susceptibility to misinformation by informing people about how they might be misinformed, but its scalability has been elusive both at a theoretical level and a practical level. We developed five short videos that inoculate people against manipulation techniques commonly used in misinformation: emotionally manipulative language, incoherence, false dichotomies, scapegoating, and ad hominem attacks.

Political Capital and its regional partners – the Czech PSSI, the Slovak IVO, and Sastre Consulting – researched the prevalence and effects of inauthentic online behavior concerning Russia’s war in Ukraine between 21 February and 31 March. Our research revealed the existence of potentially coordinated “online troll networks” engaging in efforts to artificially distort discussions on Facebook in all V4 member states, although their methods and goals differ from country to country.

One of the founding myths of Russian foreign policy relates to a betrayal by the West. Many in Russia are either unwilling or too scared to challenge the veracity of this tale since it has become national dogma. As the freedom of speech constitutes one of the fundamental and respected rights of democracies, this myth is also widely spread throughout the West. Moreover, the West’s culture of open debates, which respects differing points of view, puts Russian masterminds of false narratives in a privileged position when it comes to influencing Western societies and their decision-making processes. It also renders NATO and EU countries increasingly vulnerable to influence from pro-Kremlin propagandists spurred on by an unbridled sense of initiative and combined with active measures as well as armed conflicts.

In recent years, the topic of hybrid threats has become increasingly critical until being considered the 21st security challenge. Whereas the concept of hybrid threats may be considered new, linked to the developments of new technologies, it is not. Many of the tools of hybrid warfare are old, with the main exception being represented by the ones belonging to the cyber realm. However, the development of new technologies boosted the use of old tools, such as propaganda, by lowering their costs. Undoubtedly, the new reality in which we live increases the effectiveness of hybrid threats, because their strength lies in the possibility of combining activities and tools from different arenas. For example, the changes in the information and media landscape made the domain appealing to state and non-state actors for disinformation activities.

Online disinformation – material propagated with the intention to mislead – is a serious threat to the EU. It has contributed to many of the EU’s recent challenges: panic about immigration, the rise of the far right and left, Islamophobia, vaccine hesitancy and Brexit. Europe’s rivals, in particular Russia and China, use disinformation campaigns as low-cost and low-risk methods to foment dissent and promote their preferred narratives about these issues in the EU. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the latest battleground online. Platforms like Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram have been flooded with Putin’s lies about the ‘Nazification’ of Ukraine. In negotiating the Digital Services Act, EU law-makers balanced tackling disinformation with protecting free speech. The Commission’s last-minute proposal for stricter regulation of tech platforms during crises undermines this balance.

La práctica institucional de la desinformación no se realiza de forma aislada sino integrada en otros procesos más complejos que los estados llevan a cabo para alcanzar objetivos de interés nacional. El mejor ejemplo de ello son las «medidas activas», concepto surgido en torno a 1963 en la entonces URSS que, tomando como elemento central la desinformación, abarca un espectro más amplio de actividades. Y se ha escogido a Rusia por dos motivos: por un lado, es la nación que mejor integra y coordina la aplicación simultánea de efectos en ámbitos de operación físicos y no físicos, como el cognitivo o el ciberespacial; por otro, organizaciones multinacionales como la OTAN o la UE identifican a esta nación como fuente de actividades desinformativas.

Après la chute du Mur et la désagrégation de l’URSS, on l’avait crue remisée avec les reliques de la guerre froide. Mais depuis le milieu des années 2010, la propagande russe à destination des opinions occidentales a fait son grand retour et n’a depuis cessé de faire parler d’elle. Les crises de ces dernières années, de la présidence de Donald Trump à la guerre qui fait actuellement rage en Ukraine en passant par la pandémie de Covid-19, justifient de compléter ce que nous avions exposé en 2016. De quoi la « propagande russe » qui nous est destinée est-elle le symptôme, et pourquoi semble-t-elle avoir du succès?

This document reviews the main Kremlin narratives from October to December 2021.

Russian state-funded and state-directed media outlets RT and Sputnik are critical elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. In an August 2020 report, the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) outlined the five pillars of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. RT and Sputnik are key state-funded and directed global messengers within this ecosystem, using the guise of conventional international media outlets to provide disinformation and propaganda support for the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives. RT and Sputnik also interact with other pillars of the ecosystem by amplifying content from Kremlin and Kremlin-aligned proxy sites (some of which are connected to Russian intelligence), weaponizing social media, and promoting cyber-enabled disinformation

The Russian military build-up along the Ukrainian borders is being accompanied by an information offensive. This Hybrid CoE Working Paper analyzes that offensive and its evolution in the second half of 2021. The paper looks at public statements by high-level representatives of the Russian government, considers whether there is an increase in Russian information activities targeting Ukraine, and analyzes the narratives of these information activities. According to the analysis, the messaging of the highest Kremlin representatives and of the Russian “media” seems to run in unison and there seems to be some level of organization in the current communication campaign.

Against the backdrop of the deterioration of EU–Russia relations in recent years, there has been a shift in the awareness of hybrid threats all across the Union. At the same time, there is evidence of a growing political will to strengthen resilience to these threats. While hostile foreign actors have long deployed hybrid methods to target Europe, Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014, interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and repeated cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns aimed at EU member states have marked a turning point, exposing Western countries’ unpreparedness and vulnerability to these threats. This article analyses the EU’s resilience to hybrid warfare from institutional, regulatory and societal perspectives, with a particular focus on the information space. By drawing on case studies from member states historically at the forefront of resisting and countering Russian-backed disinformation campaigns, this article outlines the case for a whole-of-society approach to countering hybrid threats and underscores the need for EU leadership in a standard-setting capacity.

Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election drew attention to the ways that social media can be leveraged for information operations by nation-state actors. Since then, however, these campaigns have evolved. Using the 2020 election in the United States as a case study, this Hybrid CoE Working Paper evaluates how the actors, strategies, and tactics for spreading disinformation have evolved from 2016 to 2020, and discusses the direction that future policymaking should take to address contemporary trends in information operations.

As the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and Europe, another spreading menace caught the attention of experts and policymakers: infodemic. The same kind of concerns were voiced by European and international news outlets, pointing the finger at Russia, which was accused of waging an information war against the European Union, or the “West” more broadly. Allegedly, Russia was profiting from the health crisis to spread chaos within European democracies and advance its objectives. This paper intends to shed more light on the intentions and might of the Russian-backed disinformation towards Europe during the initial outbreak of COVID-19. The focus is not only on disinformation per se but on Russia’s degree of commitment to such information campaigns.

In the context of a broader state capture power mix framework, the Kremlin has launched the most consistent and aggressive disinformation campaign in Europe. The Kremlin disseminates similar anti-democratic disinformation narratives across the continent. Russia’s state-owned media and diplomatic out-posts have parroted and amplified official Kremlin mis- and disinformation narratives creating a disruptive white noise in Europe’s digital information ecosystem.

The report examines the most prominent projects undertaken by the EU institutions, public and private sectors, and civil society in the fight against disinformation. The geographical scope of the publication ranges Poland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Three Seas Region. The report includes the EU’s perspective and initiatives and introduces readers to the topic of head restraints from pre-potentials such as disinformation. In the report’s conclusion, you can also find recommendations from The Kosciuszko Institute to policy and decision-makers in building the European system of resistance to disinformation.

The study explores the scope, means and reach of Russia’s sharp power influence through the phenomenon of media capture in Southeast Europe, including EU MS Bulgaria and Croatia as well as EU aspirants Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo. It reveals both cross-regionally applicable similarities in the exercise of Kremlin’s informational leverage and country-specific strengths and vulnerabilities.

This article explores the transformative role of practices of countering digital disinformation in European Union diplomacy. It argues that an overlooked dimension of the change brought by the rise of digital disinformation is located in the emergence of everyday countering practices. Efforts to counter disinformation have led to the recruitment of new actors with different dispositions and skill sets than those of traditional diplomats and state officials in diplomatic organizations such as the European External Action Service. Focusing on the countering efforts by the East StratCom Task Force, a unit introduced in 2015, the article argues that the composition of actors, the task force's practices and the reorientation in audience perception it reflected, contributed significantly to institutional transformation.

The Russian Federation has been carrying out long-term and successful disinformation and propaganda activities against Ukraine. Due to its powerful, state-supported media structures, it is able to impose its vision of reality on its respective audiences. The purpose of this article is to determine the lexemes and topics of the “landscape” of analytical reports produced by Russia Today (RT) in 2018–2020. Lexemes and topics lay the groundwork for the RT propaganda discourse aimed at interfering and disbalancing Ukraine’s media space. This paper, based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, focuses on (1) the vocabulary structure of analytical materials, which may indicate Russian priorities, and (2) the thematic content (hidden topics) of RT messages. The RT analytical reports titles and relevant metadata were analyzed. The body of data was subdivided into periods of presidencies of P. Poroshenko and V. Zelensky.

This report examines the Russian government’s information strategies to promote Sputnik V. These strategies are analyzed in the framework of information warfare (the so-called “discursive Cold War”), in which the Kremlin presents itself as a victim of Western aggression. In recent years, Russian disinformation campaigns have come to be regarded in the West as a threat not only to national security, but to the very foundations of democratic states, while the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is perceived as a powerful weapon employed by the Putin regime.

Si les États occidentaux se mobilisent pour faire face aux manipulations informationnelles, la dimension transfrontalière de la désinformation en ligne rend nécessaire une approche internationale. L’UE et l’Otan, cibles récurrentes de campagnes de désinformation, se sont engagées à développer, chacune de leur côté, mais aussi ensemble, une stratégie cohérente de lutte contre les campagnes hybrides et contre la désinformation, en particulier. Les défis restent pourtant énormes.

America’s current strategy for responding to the Russian threat is based on a misunderstanding of the Russian approach to war and exposes the United States and its allies to a high risk of strategic defeats. The 2018 US National Defense Strategy gives primacy to deterring major conventional great power wars. Russia also seeks to avoid such wars even as it designs a different way of waging war to achieve its revisionist objectives. The US largely views this Russian approach, hybrid war, as a set of activities below the level of conventional conflict. But Russia includes significant conventional conflict in its conception and execution of hybrid war. If the US continues to focus on deterring the kind of war Russia does not intend to fight while underestimating the role military force can and must play in preventing Moscow from accomplishing its aims through hybrid war, then the US will likely suffer serious strategic defeats even as its defense strategy technically succeeds.

This paper focuses on future threats and the extent to which current EU disinformation policy instruments can meet the challenge. With the coronavirus pandemic erupting during the drafting of these papers, the overview of current instruments has been supplemented with discussion of lessons learned from the ongoing experience of this crisis.

Like the United States, the European Union (EU) has experienced Russian disinformation in social media during elections, most recently in connection with the 2019 European Parliament elections and the 2017 French and German presidential elections.4 More broadly, the EU and especially Baltic countries have felt the impact of Russian gaslighting, propaganda, and disinformation for decades, throughout the Soviet period and continuing in the post-Soviet era.

Since 2014, a variety of initiatives have been created in response to the rise of Russian interference in democracies. Some of the organizations, while created as answers to a real and increasingly exigent danger, began their work without a clear mandate or political will behind them. As a result, their work has not always been fully effective, falling subject to “Band-Aid Effect” in which the creation of new bodies to address the complex problem of foreign interference in democracies is viewed—whether by the convening institution, the media, or the public—in itself as a panacea. Through a study of six key unilateral and multilateral efforts in Europe to counter disinformation and hybrid threats, this paper identifies best practices and pitfalls in establishing such bodies. It assesses the extent to which they are integrated into meaningful policy- and decision-making processes, the extent to which they coordinate across government and with each other, and the extent to which they are meeting public-facing program objectives.

On May 6, 2019, Facebook took down a small network of fake accounts emanating from Russia,that shared a range of false, polarizing, and divisive content, including attacks on immigrants. There were only 16 accounts, and their posts had little impact, but they were the tip of a much larger iceberg. Starting from the accounts that Facebook took down, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) uncovered a large-scale influence operation that spanned nine languages, over 30 social networks and blogging platforms, and scores of fake user profiles and identities. Linguistic and contextual clues support Facebook’s analysis that the operation was run from Russia.

Media freedom and journalistic news media as an institution are the first targets when hostile actors try to undermine democracy and freedom of speech. In addition to journalists, the work of authorities, government officials, and researchers is also hampered. Today, independent and fact-based news reporting is in danger, and the existence of the journalistic media is threatened, not only by authoritarian governments but also by other hostile actors (domestic and foreign).

Disinformation is one of the defining issues of our time. Spread and amplified by social media and an anti-establishment current in global politics that creates a demand for 'alternative narratives', the influence of fake news has become an acute threat to democratic societies.

Information manipulation is not a new phenomenon. The attention that it has recently attracted is tied to a combination of two factors: on the one hand, the unprecedented capacity of the internet and social networks to rapidly, even ‘virally,’ spread information; on the other hand, the crisis of confidence that our democracies are experiencing, which devalues public speech and goes so far as to relativize the very notion of truth. The 2016 US and 2017 French elections have shed a critical light on this phenomenon, its mechanism and consequences. Yet, the impact of information manipulation—and, in some cases, its very existence—is sometimes called into question.

This article explores the dynamics of digital (dis)information in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. International Relations scholars have presented the online debate in terms of ‘information warfare’—that is, a number of strategic campaigns to win over local and global public opinion, largely orchestrated by the Kremlin and pro-western authorities. However, this way of describing the online debate reduces civil society to a mere target for manipulation. This article presents a different understanding of the debate. By examining the social media engagement generated by one of the conflict's most important events—the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over Ukraine—we explore how competing claims about the cause of the plane crash are disseminated by the state, media and civil society.

Les stratégies de Moscou à destination des opinions occidentales sont particulièrement ressenties par les pays d’Europe centrale, mais de manières diverses. Les gouvernements réagissent différemment, en fonction des équilibres politiques internes et de leur positionnement vis-à-vis de la Russie. Les dérives politiques intérieures de certains de ces pays pourraient pourtant miner la légitimité même de cette opposition à la désinformation russe.

The basic tenet of the Russian disinformation strategy is the claim that all news is constructed and therefore contested. In the best postmodern tradition they claim there is no 'objective news' - only different, rivalling interpretations which purport to show different aspects of what may be called 'reality'. And what the Russian media outlets present are merely possible explanations which serve as alternatives to the stories offered by Western media. It is a strategy which is both cunning and elegant as it preys on the enlightenment tradition and on the vulnerabilities of liberal democratic media. The Russian authorities seem to believe that (dis- ) information campaigns hold great prospects. There will not be any easy or fix-it-all solutions to this development. Rather, liberal democracies, especially vulnerable as a result of their free media culture, should prepare themselves for a long-term commitment to countering disinformation and to building up cognitive resilience to ensure that the former has minimal effect.

Il existe de nombreuses recherches sur l’influence russe, mais peu sur la désinformation qui est l’un des moyens utilisés et encore moins sur les manières d’y répondre. Dans la lutte contre la désinformation russe, qui occupe désormais de façon explicite l’Union européenne (UE), l’Otan et plusieurs États, la consigne est de contrer la propagande sans faire de contre-propagande.

Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a remarkable evolution in Russia’s approach to propaganda. This new approach was on full display during the country’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It continues to be demonstrated in support of ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and in pursuit of nefarious and long-term goals in Russia’s “near abroad” and against NATO allies.

The report stresses that there is no simple characterisation or a single concept, such as "hybrid warfare", which is sufficient on its own to evaluate Russia's foreign, security and defense policies. Instead, each of Russia's strengths and weaknesses should be analyzed separately. The researchers analyse a number of topics such as the effectiveness of propaganda (information war), Russia’s approach to building up its own self-image as a great power, how Russia combines displays of military power with the actual use of the military in its foreign policy, what improvements there have been in Russia's ability to coordinate war operations in the 2000s , the long-term effects of the inefficient use of the Russian military budget, as well as the effectiveness of deterrence and the importance of preventative action in the light of Russia's recent military activities.

In less than a decade, the Kremlin has learned to use the principles of liberal democracy against the West, developing innovative propaganda techniques and eventually accomplishing what has been called the “weaponization of information.” The Kremlin has played a crucial role in Russian coverage of the Ukraine conflict: state media, fueled by millions of dollars, has spread blatant misinformation, creating a frenzied atmosphere of suspicion and hostility. In the twenty-first century, information warfare has become the world’s primary form of warfare, and effective countermeasures have yet to be developed. This report authored by two prominent journalists aims to help members of governments, civil society, and the media understand how the Kremlin’s propaganda machine works and the challenges it presents to the West. It also provides a set of recommendations for how best to confront these challenges.