Today, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation (CCD) are publishing a joint analytical report examining how Russian Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) targets Ukraine’s path towards European Union membership.
The report documents a coordinated effort to undermine support for Ukraine’s accession among both Ukrainian and European audiences. While the narratives vary depending on the target audience, their strategic objective is to weaken political and public support for Ukraine’s European future.
Ukraine’s European integration has become one of the Kremlin’s key information targets since the country was granted EU candidate status in June 2022 and accession negotiations formally opened in June 2024. The accession process has become a focal point for discussions about security, reconstruction, economic modernisation, and Ukraine’s long-term geopolitical orientation. As a result, it has also become a prime target for manipulation.
The report combines two complementary analyses. The CCD examines how Russian information operations seek to erode domestic support for EU accession inside Ukraine. The EEAS analyses how similar actors target European audiences to weaken support for enlargement and assistance to Ukraine.
Together, the findings reveal a coordinated and increasingly sophisticated campaign operating across borders, languages, and platforms.
Four narratives targeting Ukrainians
The CCD monitored approximately 244 000 publications on Ukraine’s accession between January 2025 and April 2026, generating a combined 1.39 billion views. More than 2 600 sources displayed indicators of coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
The analysis identified four dominant narratives:
- the EU allegedly prolongs the war to weaken Russia,
- EU Member States supposedly seek to partition Ukraine,
- European integration is portrayed as a mechanism for external control over Ukraine,
- Ukraine is presented as incompatible with European values.
These narratives are amplified through a layered ecosystem involving Russian state institutions, state-controlled media, Telegram channels linked to Russian influence networks, state-aligned actors, and pseudo-local channels that adapt messages to regional concerns.
The report also documents a range of techniques used by the Kremlin and its proxies, including:
- coordinated amplification across social media platforms,
- manipulated maps depicting the partition of Ukraine,
- the selective quotation of European officials,
- event hijacking,
- the localisation of narratives to exploit regional sensitivities.
Targeting support for Ukraine across Europe
The EEAS analysis examined around 80 incidents linked to Ukraine’s accession process over the last eighteen months.
Russian FIMI activities targeting European audiences focus primarily on three themes: values, people and leaders, and money.
To target European values, Russian actors increasingly rely on coordinated inauthentic behaviour networks and generative AI tools to mass-produce localised content tailored to national audiences. Economic concerns are emphasised in Germany, corruption narratives in France, and refugee-related fears in Poland. Electoral campaigns and security incidents are systematically exploited as opportunities to maximise reach and impact.
Ukraine’s leadership remains a frequent target. The report identifies repeated attempts to launder fabricated corruption allegations through a chain of Russian state institutions, state media, and state-linked influence actors. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a particular focus of these operations.
At the same time, Ukrainians themselves are increasingly portrayed as a threat. False claims linking Ukrainian refugees to criminality, insecurity, or social disorder are designed to fuel hostility and undermine public solidarity.
Financial support for Ukraine is another major target. Russian influence networks repeatedly seek to portray European assistance as corrupt, misused, or harmful to EU citizens, often through fabricated evidence, media impersonation, and coordinated amplification.
An evolving threat environment
The report highlights how emerging technologies are lowering the cost and increasing the scale of information manipulation.
Generative AI, coordinated cross-platform amplification, and information-laundering techniques represent an attempt by hostile actors to quickly adapt narratives to different audiences and political contexts. The repeated rebranding of EU-sanctioned outlets further demonstrates how the Russian influence ecosystem tries to circumvent restrictive measures.
The findings also show that electoral cycles, major policy decisions, and breaking security incidents continue to provide predictable opportunities for manipulation attempts.
Building resilience together
Despite these efforts, the report finds no evidence that Russian information operations have altered Ukraine’s strategic choice to pursue EU membership.
However, the risks remain significant. In Ukraine, sustained exposure to manipulative narratives may contribute to growing uncertainty among vulnerable audiences. Across Europe, the normalisation of hostile narratives about Ukraine and Ukrainians risks weakening public support for enlargement and continued assistance.
The joint EEAS-CCD report demonstrates the value of cooperation in identifying, analysing, and exposing foreign information manipulation and interference. It also underlines a broader reality: Ukraine’s European future is not only a matter of accession policy, but also a target in the wider contest over Europe’s security, democratic resilience, and political future.
The full report is available here.
