European Security

Last week saw a new, yet familiar narrative circulate aimed at discrediting the democratic elections in Romania and stirring mistrust of European institutions. According to a recent disinfor-mation narrative, France’s intelligence services some-how ‘rigged’ Romania’s elections to block hard-right presidential candidate George Simion, all under the watchful eye of a so-called ‘European mafia’. The story, amplified by pro-Kremlin and fringe platforms, falsely claims that Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposed a plot by French secret services to censor Romanian opposition voices – and that this censorship handed a stolen election to the elites. The tale does not stop there. It uses the idea that ‘the people never decide anything’, an assertion designed to amplify cynicism, ethnic division, and institutional distrust.

Moscow pays cynical lip service to peace efforts, blames Europe and Ukraine for Russia’s aggression, and ramps up historical revisionism ahead of WWII commemoration events. After more than three years of Russia waging an illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, peace has become the talk of the town in recent weeks. Especially, if the town in question is Washington or Moscow. There is no doubt that no one would like a just and durable peace more than Kyiv. But lately it has been Moscow making overtures to peace while falsely blaming Ukraine and Europe for Russia’s aggression. These manipulation attempts are as transparent as they are cynical.

Russia’s FIMI operations in Africa are not fleeting campaigns but an embedded, adaptive and persistent feature of the information environment. Russia aims to reshape public perception, undermine Western influence, and advance its own long-term, geopolitical objectives on the continent. Africa has increasingly become a geopolitical battleground, and nowhere is this clearer than in the information space. Recent findings in the 3rd EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) Threats show that Russia, in particular, has significantly expanded its FIMI operations across the continent, employing a long-term, multi-layered strategy that embeds itself within the region’s information landscape. In 2022, following the EU’s suspension of state-controlled RT and Sputnik, Russia executed a strategic pivot. Not forgetting Europe, it redirected its manipulative firepower, and adapted its tactics, to deepen its influence in Africa, capitalising on regional political shifts and positioning itself as a counterforce to the West.