Information Warfare

In the final days before the September 6 election, an influence operation attributed by German authorities to the “Storm-1516” network — linked to Russian military intelligence (GRU) — attempted to discredit postal voting in Saxony-Anhalt. This was not an isolated strike: the same campaign had already targeted outgoing Minister-President Sven Schulze (CDU) a few weeks earlier, via a fake clone of the Süddeutsche Zeitung website.

The Kremlin’s information manipulation apparatus is sparing no resources in its effort to cast Germany as a historical villain, saturating its channels with narratives of a resurgent, aggressive power. Russian state-controlled television and other pro-Kremlin outlets relentlessly push the idea that Germany is on a war footing, deliberately distorting Germany’s defensive security policies into a twisted fabrication of an offensive intent.

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.

Check out the real reason why Russia was not invited to the Auschwitz commemoration. And no, the West has not turned ‘Nazi’. Not so long ago, on 27 January 2025, the world commemorated 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army in 1945. There was no Russian delegation present at the event. Why? Because since Russia’s unprovoked and illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has refused to invite the aggressor to the annual commemoration, denouncing Russia’s war against Ukraine as a ‘barbaric act. The Kremlin and its mouthpieces have, as usual, made up an explanation for Russia’s absence from the Auschwitz commemoration: Western Russophobia and historical revisionism, and the revival of Nazism in the EU and Ukraine. In fact, Moscow has been using the ‘Nazi brush’ throughout the war to smear anyone standing up to Russian imperialism. Lately, Russia has used the same tactic to belittle and ridicule the European Union in the context of negotiating peace in Ukraine.

In the murky landscape of disinformation, few narratives have proven as stubbornly persistent as the claim that NATO expansion provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. This myth, recycled and rebranded by Kremlin apologists, shifts blame for Russia’s aggression onto the West – ignoring history and facts. It’s time to call this narrative what it is: a convenient distortion designed to justify an unjustifiable war. To truly understand this war, look not at NATO’s decisions, but at Vladimir Putin’s own words. In his infamous July 2021 essay and February 2022 speech, Putin dismissed Ukrainian sovereignty and framed the country as a historical part of Russia. His motivations aren’t defensive – they’re imperial. The invasion was about reasserting control over a former Soviet republic, crushing a thriving democracy on Russia’s border, and signalling to other post-Soviet states that turning westward comes with consequences. Putin doesn’t fear NATO. He fears democracy. That’s the real threat to the Kremlin’s power.

Moldova has been used as a testing and development ground for Russian FIMI operations for a long time. We take a look at some of the more distinct features of these experiments from last year’s campaign. Last year’s combination of a presidential election and an EU referendum offered Russia an opportunity it could not afford to ignore, as we examined here and here. Russia certainly did not restrain itself when it came to funding or other resources. In the 3rd EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) Threats, we took a closer look at the role of FIMI as part of a much wider influence campaign targeting Moldova in 2024. Leading up to the election, Russia increased the intensity of its FIMI operations against Moldova. Combining existing infrastructure with newly developed assets, Russia tried to undermine the EU enlargement process and weaken support for President Maia Sandu. EUvsDiSiNFO highlight four main ingredients from the Russian FIMI cocktail. This time the Kremlin decided to be much more transparent, combining both covert and overt channels.