EU struggles to counter Russian disinformation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s anti-disinformation team has denied a Russian-language video posted on YouTube last month that claimed people were fleeing a dictatorship in EU member state Poland and seeking refuge in Belarus, a close Russian ally.

The team, called StratCom, said the news article was pushing a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative that Warsaw harbours aggressive militarist intentions and that democracy is failing in Poland and across the EU.

It is also part of what Stratcom calls a wider Russian disinformation campaign that is widely seen as something Europe is struggling to counter ahead of European Parliament elections from June 6-9.

The videos showed a pattern: Russia-linked websites were taking pro-Russian content from state media and pro-Russian social media accounts, translating or otherwise repackaging it, and distributing it through new channels targeted at EU audiences, EU officials said.

Russia has been widely accused of waging disinformation campaigns targeting elections in the United States, Europe and Britain over the past decade, but the Russian government denies using disinformation to influence public opinion.

A 2023 U.S. intelligence assessment found that Moscow has used espionage, social media and Russian state media to undermine public confidence in the integrity of elections around the world.

European leaders have warned of a surge in disinformation ahead of the elections, but its impact is difficult to measure.

“Influence operations by Russia, China and other actors, including domestic groups, could disrupt online conversations around the EU elections,” said Jack Stubbs, chief information officer at social network analysis firm Graphika.

“We’ve seen evidence that even those running the operations are struggling to understand whether they’re having an impact.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Russia denies Western claims that it is spreading disinformation.

Stratcom, a 40-person team operating on a shoestring budget of 15 million euros ($16.3 million), is on the Brussels front line in the fight against disinformation, but the 27-nation bloc lacks the resources needed for the fight, two EU officials said.

“We cannot launch an offensive from Brussels,” European Commission foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said, adding that such action had to take place at member state level.

Most, if not all, EU countries are fighting their own battles against disinformation, but their resources vary and experts say Europe’s efforts are disjointed.

This leaves mainstream parties vulnerable to disinformation campaigns that stoke voter discontent and amplify the resentment that underpins support for nationalist parties in France, Germany and other countries.

The EU’s second annual disinformation report, released this year, found that Poland and Germany were the most targeted EU countries, with France and non-EU country Serbia also among the top targets.

Moscow, whose relations with the West have deteriorated since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, claims the West is waging an information war that includes false claims aimed at discrediting Russia and portraying it as an enemy.

Russian officials, who have suppressed dissent under President Vladimir Putin, say the West has become too intolerant and unwilling to accept any opinion that contradicts the dominant view.

Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s European minister, told the daily Ouest-France in April that France had been “hit” by Russian disinformation.

Attacks against France have included the creation of a fake French government website claiming that 200,000 French citizens were being drafted to fight in Ukraine, and a widespread bedbug scare in Paris that was amplified by Kremlin-backed efforts.

“Not a week goes by without us being the target of a systematic and deliberate attempt to disrupt the public debate and interfere in the campaign for the European Parliament elections,” Barro told the paper.

Tomasz Fron, the Polish government’s international disinformation commissioner, told Reuters that blocking a website because it appears elsewhere is like squeezing a balloon.

Efforts to combat disinformation vary across Europe.

France has tasked its expanding foreign disinformation watchdog, Viginam, with monitoring Russia-linked social media accounts and uncovering influence operations, while Spain has a dedicated task force using Europol-designed hardware to coordinate the national response.

Italy’s opposition parties have drafted a bill to set up a specialised unit to identify disinformation campaigns, while Slovakia, whose government has been accused of being pro-Russia, has all but dismantled a unit it said was made up of “activist clerks” to ensure there was “only one correct opinion”.

“The overall response has been very piecemeal,” said Valentin Chatelet, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Institute.

In a sign of Europe’s intention to take stronger action, EU countries last month suspended four Russian media outlets, including the Czech-registered website Voice of Europe, calling them propaganda networks with ties to the Kremlin.

The Kremlin said it would retaliate by imposing sanctions on Western journalists in Moscow.

The EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA) requires big tech companies to do more to combat illegal and harmful content, and EU officials say generative AI has made it faster and easier for foreign actors to spread misinformation.

“Before, there was usually a human behind the trolls and bots. With the advent of AI, everything has doubled down,” Stano said.

(Reporting by Julia Payne; Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka, Annan Koper, John Irish, David Latona and Sarah Marsh; Editing by Richard Ruff and Timothy Heritage)

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