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| A weekly newsletter zooming in on Europe through local perspectives. Every Friday, one topic explored by five independent newsrooms. | | IN THIS ISSUE | §01 · In focus — From Russian State TV to Social Media: How Kremlin Propaganda Is Adapting in Europe — and Who Still Consumes It
§02 · The local view — Berlin, Riga, Warsaw, Vienna and Zagreb
§03 · The podcast — Listen to the latest episode and join the conversation
§04 · From the newsrooms — Recent reporting from the lensEU network |
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| §01 · IN FOCUS | The new Kremlin propaganda does not ask you to support Russia | The Kremlin only needs to make Europe distrustful, divided and unwilling to defend itself - militarily, politically and democratically. It succeeds when Europeans stop trusting their governments, independent media, NATO, the EU and, eventually, the possibility of establishing the truth at all. | For years, the most visible form of Kremlin propaganda was easy to recognise: Russian flags, furious television presenters and a simple message that Russia was strong, the West was corrupt and Vladimir Putin was the defender of historical justice. That model still exists, but the more adaptable version no longer asks Europeans to admire Russia. In many cases, it barely needs to talk about Russia at all. | Instead, it tells people that their government is lying, journalists are hiding the truth, NATO will not protect them, the EU is hypocritical and support for Ukraine is taking money from their families. It does not have to persuade them that Moscow is right. It only has to convince them that nobody else is trustworthy. | The product is not belief. It is cynicism. | The message moved. The objective did not | Latvia offers an early warning. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, access to Russian state television was heavily restricted. That was necessary: it disrupted a major propaganda system. But removing the loudspeaker did not remove the message. | It moved to Telegram, TikTok, YouTube and networks of apparently local commentators, influencers and “alternative news” channels. What once arrived through Russian television now appears as a clip shared by a friend, a local Telegram post or an angry video from someone who looks ordinary. | This is not television propaganda on a different screen. It is decentralised, adaptive and designed to borrow the credibility of local voices and grievances. It looks organic even when its narratives, financing and amplification are coordinated. | Russian-speaking communities remain important, especially for narratives about “Russophobia”, language restrictions or minority persecution. But the broader target is the European who feels ignored, economically insecure, politically homeless or frightened by war. For one audience, the entry point is immigration; for another, inflation. Others may be reached through anger at Brussels, energy prices, military spending or political elites. | The grievances differ, but they are pushed towards the same outcome: distrust at home, resentment towards Ukraine and hesitation about collective defence. The strategic result is paralysis. A society that sees its own institutions as fraudulent and its allies as predatory will hesitate before every difficult collective decision. | Modern propaganda does not need to invent reality. It takes genuine problems - inflation, institutional failures and wasted public money - strips away the context and attaches them to a predetermined explanation: prices rose because of Ukraine; your hospital is underfunded because money was sent to Kyiv; NATO will provoke Russia and then abandon you; independent media are merely the other side’s propaganda. | Each claim may contain a fragment of truth. The manipulation lies in the causal chain. | That distinction matters. Criticising a government is not Kremlin propaganda. Opposing an EU policy is not treason. Questioning military spending or demanding accountability for aid to Ukraine is legitimate democratic debate. A democracy that labels every uncomfortable opinion “disinformation” will destroy its credibility faster than Moscow ever could. | But democratic openness does not require stupidity. | When coordinated networks conceal their financing, impersonate local voices, amplify fabricated claims and game platform algorithms, this is not merely another opinion. It is an influence operation. Freedom of expression protects the right to speak; it does not create a right to hidden state financing, artificial amplification or immunity from scrutiny. | Social media give these operations both reach and camouflage. Propagandists can test thousands of messages on different groups, while platform companies have built systems that reward division, outrage and fear because those emotions generate engagement. A threat from a Kremlin official may be dismissed as propaganda, but the same message, delivered through a familiar face and attached to a genuine local grievance, can feel like common sense. | And Russia is not the only authoritarian power exploiting this weakness. | China - a key enabler of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine - uses a quieter version of the same authoritarian logic. Beijing does not need Europeans to become communists. It needs them to associate China with prosperity, stability and competence, while seeing democratic conflict as chaos and scrutiny as hostility. | Russian propaganda floods the room with noise. Beijing’s influence operations are more patient: they make economic dependence look like pragmatism, censorship look like order and authoritarian power inevitable. | Europe cannot fact-check its way out of distrust | Europe’s response remains too slow. A false claim appears, fact-checkers correct it, officials issue a statement and platforms remove several accounts. By then, the emotional conclusion has travelled further than the correction: the government hid something, the media cannot be trusted and powerful forces are controlling the debate. | Fact-checking is necessary, but corrections arrive too late when distrust has already become the organising principle of political life. | Once enough Europeans believe that every institution lies and every fact is negotiable - that everything is possible and nothing is true - Russia no longer needs to win the argument. Europe has already lost the ability to act together. | The Kremlin has modernised methods familiar from Goebbels. The harder question is why so many European politicians remain too afraid to admit a simpler truth: we do not know everything, and we cannot promise that everything will remain as it was. This is not Hamlet’s existential dilemma. It is a test of political courage. | European leaders must be honest that resisting Russia’s authoritarian regime and its populist allies will require adaptation, higher defence and security costs and difficult trade-offs in public spending. Voters must choose between politicians who sell comforting illusions and leaders honest enough to explain what defending democracy will actually cost. | That does not make the answer a ministry of truth. | It means forcing platforms to expose coordinated manipulation and hidden financing, giving journalists and researchers meaningful access to platform data and supporting independent journalism capable of reaching neglected audiences. It also means demanding that public institutions communicate quickly and honestly before an information vacuum is filled by Moscow. | Media cannot merely insist that they are credible. They must show their work, correct their failures and remain independent of political power. | The Kremlin’s ideal European need not support Russia. They need only trust nobody, resent Ukraine, expect betrayal from their allies and stop believing that democracy can defend either truth or itself. | Toms Ostrovskis, editor-in-chief, TVNET GRUPA |
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| | | Berlin · Germany · CORRECTIV | AI, deepfakes and influencers: How Russia sought to manipulate public opinion ahead of the Bundestag election | Russia is making a concerted effort to sway public opinion in the West. This is evident in disinformation campaigns such as Doppelgänger and Matryoshka. They are part of Russia’s “hybrid war” and are intended to undermine support for Ukraine. | In the spring of 2025, CORRECTIV, in cooperation with NewsGuard and with the help of the investigative project Gnida, uncovered another Russian campaign targeting Germany: “Storm-1516.” Starting with disinformation that had come to light, we traced its technical trail. This led us to a network of more than 100 German-language websites created before the federal election. False information was then posted on these purported news sites and circulated via social media. | A hallmark of the campaign is the use of AI-manipulated photos and deepfake videos—and, in particular, brazen false claims: that then-Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck had sexually abused a young woman years ago. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was said to be meeting with a gigolo during her trips to Africa. A migration agreement with Kenya was claimed to be bringing 1.9 million Kenyans to Germany. | Unlike earlier campaigns, Strom-1516 relies not on bots but on real influencers. According to experts, this makes the campaign more effective at achieving a wider reach. CORRECTIV was able to identify the network of German disseminators as well as links to the former Russian troll factory, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), and the military intelligence service GRU. | Thanks to this investigation, the campaign’s content could be more quickly attributed and identified as Russian disinformation. A few months later, in December 2025, the Russian ambassador was summoned by the federal government. Among other things, the government accused Russia of attempting to influence the Bundestag election campaign through the “Storm-1516” campaign we had uncovered. | Alexej Hock, Investigative Journalism – Editorial & Local News, CORRECTIV |
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| | Riga · Latvia · TVNET | Latvia Defeated Russian Television. But Has It Won the Information War? | The start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine led Latvia to ban some of the most prominent sources of Russian television propaganda. Well-known channels including RTR, Rossiya 24, TV Centr and others were taken off the air. | Latvia’s information environment has become healthier, but it has not yet fully recovered from the virus of Russian influence. Instead, that influence has shifted from television to the far less regulated online sphere. | Although Latvia’s media regulator NEPLP, has been granted the authority to restrict access to websites that threaten national security, the State Security Service (VDD) notes that Russia continues to shape public sentiment by expanding its propaganda and disinformation activities online. | Telegram, Facebook and YouTube have become the main distribution channels. Through these platforms, Russian narratives continue to influence parts of Latvian society, particularly Russian-speaking audiences. | The origin of propaganda content is often concealed. It is presented as original material produced by local bloggers, community groups or supposedly independent news pages. | The narratives themselves, however, have changed very little. Through manipulative “explanations,” Latvia continues to be portrayed as a Russophobic, failed state dependent on the West. Support for Ukraine is linked to declining living standards, while restrictions on Russian media are framed as censorship and the persecution of Russian-speaking residents. | Latvia has responded with website blocking, monitoring, support for professional journalism and media literacy programmes. Yet restrictions alone are not enough. | The limited availability of credible Russian-language alternatives — a situation many describe as the result of an openly political decision — leaves part of the audience dependent on unregulated platforms. | Andrejs Timofejevs, TVNET GRUPA Journalist. |
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| | Warsaw · Poland · OKO.press | Russia’s cognitive warfare fuels tensions between Poles and Ukrainians living in Poland | The number of Ukrainians living in Poland stands at nearly 1.7 million. They account for 4.5 percent of Poland’s population and more than 70 percent of all foreign nationals. Just a dozen or so years ago, Poland was an almost entirely monoethnic country, which is why the arrival of such a large number of Ukrainians has caused concern among part of Polish society. | This is despite the fact that Ukrainians are a group of foreigners who are generally doing very well in Poland — as a rule, they speak Polish well and work. | Russia is exploiting and fuelling this anxiety. Polish social media is flooded with content produced by Russian networks of fake websites and profiles. In increasingly brutal narratives, Ukrainians are accused of the most serious crimes, of humiliating Poles, and of posing a military threat to Poland. | One consequence has been a rise in attacks against Ukrainian citizens. Police statistics show that the number of investigations and inquiries into xenophobically motivated assaults is increasing this year. If the trend continues, there could be more than 30 percent more such cases this year than last year. | It was only after several recent attacks on Ukrainians — particularly the widely publicised assault on a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław — that the authorities responded more forcefully and street demonstrations against xenophobia were held. | But the anti-Ukrainian and anti-Ukraine sentiment fuelled by Russian propaganda is also translating into opportunistic actions by Polish politicians. A recent analysis prepared for the Stafan Batory Foundation by Marek Ziółkowski, a former Polish ambassador to Kyiv, shows that Poland’s military assistance to Ukraine, which was substantial immediately after the full-scale invasion, has now fallen to very low levels. | Bartosz Kocejko-Szukalski, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, OKO.press. |
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| | Vienna · Austria · Die Presse | Russians responsible for a cyber attack in Vienna in 2020 | In January 2020, a cyber attack was carried out against the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry’s IT systems were targeted by the hackers. It appears that the aim was to extract internal information relating to Russia. It was only after several weeks that the authorities were able to declare the massive cyber attack over. | In July 2026, the Austrian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the notorious Russian cyber-espionage group Turla was behind the massive attack. Even immediately after the attack, there were indications that the trail led to Russia. Now, however, Austria has officially named those responsible for the first time. | Turla is reportedly controlled by the so-called 16th Centre of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The EU announced this recently and, together with the UK, imposed sanctions on several individuals and companies in Russia. The EU member states jointly revealed that Russia’s intelligence service, in collaboration with cyber-espionage groups, is responsible for a series of attacks in Europe. Public institutions and critical infrastructure were targeted. In addition to Austria, Germany, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Cyprus were also affected. | “Cyber-attacks threaten our security: when payment systems fail, or rail networks or hospitals are attacked, it affects every single one of us. Europe is experiencing an increasing number of such attacks, and one of the main perpetrators is Russia,” said Austria’s Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger. “Austria is also affected. The public has a right to know where the threat is coming from. That is why we are not hiding behind diplomatic platitudes, but are naming those responsible and taking action.” It has been made clear to the Russian ambassador in Austria that cyber-attacks on Austria are “unacceptable”. | In France, according to reports from Paris, the FSB-controlled Turla group stole classified material from a French high-tech firm in 2025. In Poland, Russian cyber-warriors have recently carried out sabotage operations against power stations. | Wieland Schneider, foreign journalist, „Die Presse“. |
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| | Zagreb · Croatia · Telegram.hr | No Country for Russian Propaganda | Croatia is by no means easy ground for Russian propaganda. An armed attack by a militarily superior neighbor with the intention of occupying even a country or at least a part of it is damn reminiscent of what Croatia experienced some 30 years ago. Russian aggression against Ukraine is therefore difficult to justify in Croatia with any narrative. | It is no surprise that the topic of Russian propaganda in Croatia never gained traction as an important societal issue. In February 2022, in line with EU-level decisions, the broadcasting of Sputnik and Russia Today was banned, and after some time, the Russian propaganda portal Pravda appeared in Croatian—poorly designed, poorly translated, and with virtually no reach. | Thus, acting in Russian interests has been reserved for domestic political bickering. Namely, the President of the Republic, Zoran Milanović, is often skeptical of Western narratives surrounding the war in Ukraine—attributing part of the blame for the conflict to the non-compliance with earlier agreements, and appealing for negotiations rather than all-out rearmament. Although Milanović condemned both Putin and Russian aggression long ago, the Government accuses him of pro-Russian activity due to such stances. | The peak of Russian propaganda accusations occurred during an alleged foreign influence attempt on the presidential election in early 2025. But not the kind of foreign influence you might first think of. | Two days before the election silence, the London-based international Centre for Information Resilience published a report claiming that the Croatian presidential election was under attack by foreign—primarily Russian and Serbian—influences. Government officials immediately began spreading the story and commenting on it with outrage; however, the flaws were glaringly obvious. | Besides the report's authors remaining anonymous and its methodology unknown, the report categorized certain far-right portals—which were pushing the Government's candidate in the presidential race—as portals favorable to Milanović. Real people were labeled as pro-Russian bots. The report did not even mention the only tangible evidence of campaign fraud: TikTok had removed seven thousand bots from the profile of one presidential candidate. But that candidate was not Milanović. | "Russian propaganda" in the presidential election was, by all accounts, a poorly executed false-flag operation by Milanović's political opponents. The outcome? Milanović won the presidential election with 75 percent of the vote. | Jasmin Klarić, journalist, Telegram. |
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| §03 · THE PODCAST | Europe and the Kremlin’s changing information war | This episode of the LensEU Podcast examines how Kremlin propaganda has adapted since the EU restricted Russian state media after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although these measures reduced the reach of Russian television channels, propaganda did not disappear. Instead, it moved to social media platforms, messaging apps, influencers, and AI-generated content, making it harder to identify and counter. | Using Latvia and Poland as case studies, the podcast highlights how Russian influence campaigns adapt to different national contexts. In Latvia, decades of Soviet rule and a large Russian-speaking population created a long-standing Russian-language information space. According to geopolitical expert Māris Andžāns, this allowed Kremlin narratives to continue reaching audiences even after Russian television channels were banned. These narratives increasingly spread beyond Russian-speaking communities and enter wider political debates. | In Poland, where pro-Russian messages have little appeal, influence operations focus on weakening support for Ukraine and deepening social divisions. Journalist Bartosz Kocejko-Szukalski explains that Russian-linked campaigns exploit concerns about refugees, national identity, and historical grievances, using fake social media accounts, spam networks, and AI-generated content to amplify their messages. | |
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