Russia is escalating its Info War - is Europe still playing defence?

Russia’s disinformation operations are no longer about spreading lies. They’re about eroding trust, quietly and systemically, until democratic societies begin to doubt truth altogether.

Source: Freepik

A new report by the Psychological Defence Research Institute at Lund University reveals just how sophisticated these operations have become. It looks at the shadowy “Social Design Agency” (SDA), a covert Kremlin-linked entity behind campaigns like the notorious Operation Doppelgänger from 2022, which deployed cloned versions of trusted news sites to spread pro-Russian propaganda and erode international support for Ukraine. The report goes further to reveal a sprawling €600 million-per-year infrastructure for influence operations. The kind that moves beyond disinformation and into psychological warfare, deliberately embedded in the everyday information ecosystem. 

The SDA’s approach is audacious in its simplicity: forge convincing replicas of trusted European media outlets, use them to plant Kremlin-friendly narratives, and amplify the result through fake social media accounts. The targets are carefully chosen: narratives are designed to undermine Ukrainian military resilience, weaken NATO unity, cast doubt on EU enlargement, and erode public support for sanctions against Russia. But unlike older propaganda methods, this strategy isn’t trying to win the argument - it’s trying to wear down the audience until no argument feels worth having.

What makes this new wave of disinformation especially dangerous is its evolving capacity. After the U.S. Department of Justice shut down over 30 Doppelgänger-linked domains in late 2024, the SDA rapidly reconstituted its network. It learns from failure. Each time a network is exposed, another appears smarter, subtler, posing significant challenges for intelligence agencies, fact-checkers, and the public alike. The disinformation landscape has become a game of asymmetric adaptation, and Russia is winning.

For Europe, and especially for the Balkan region, this is a moment of acute structural vulnerability where security is concerned. The Balkans remain fertile ground for influence operations, in part due to weak media regulation, concentrated ownership, and highly politicised public advertising markets. These conditions, long exploited by domestic actors, now serve as open channels for foreign influence operations. In such an ecosystem, clone content doesn’t just spread - it metastasizes, often reaching audiences before fact-checkers can even mobilise. And yet, social media platforms continue to treat disinformation as a reputational nuisance, not as a structural threat to stability.

The Lund report also underscores a key shift in the Kremlin’s strategy: disinformation doesn’t aim to persuade anymore. Its goal is to paralyse and to manufacture doubt so persistent that citizens disengage from public life entirely. Today’s most potent disinformation doesn’t ask you to believe the wrong thing; it convinces you nothing is worth believing.

This is precisely what makes the stakes so high for Europe. The Lund report makes clear that disinformation is no longer a sideshow. It is central to the contest over Europe’s democratic future. While it focuses squarely on the Kremlin’s SDA apparatus, it reveals a highly adaptive, cost-effective blueprint designed for replication by state and non-state actors alike. The longer Europe waits to respond with strategic, coordinated, and well-enforced regulation, the more ground it cedes in a battle it cannot afford to lose.

Legislative tools like the European Media Freedom Act, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act have the potential to serve as Europe’s coordinated response, but leaders must work with both member states and candidate countries to close regulatory loopholes, strip captured regulators of influence, and hold tech giants accountable for the algorithmic damage on democratic values. 

If Europe is serious about defending democracy, not just within its borders but in the candidate countries hoping to join, it must treat disinformation as a structural threat. The disinformation wars are here, and if democracies fail to adapt, they won’t be undermined by one great lie, but by thousands of subtle fakes that slowly wear down our collective sense of what’s real.