Kremlin Drone Disinformation Campaign Targets EU

The Krem­lin drone dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign exploits air­space incur­sions across the Euro­pean Union to fuel psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare oper­a­tions designed to under­mine pub­lic sup­port for Ukraine. On 28 Octo­ber 2025, Cybernews report­ed that Google Threat Intel­li­gence Team observed mul­ti­ple Rus­sia-linked actors includ­ing Por­tal Kom­bat, Dop­pel­ganger, and Nieza­leżny Dzi­en­nik Poli­ty­czny sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly lever­ag­ing drone inci­dents in Poland and oth­er EU nations to sow dis­trust in local gov­ern­ments and erode con­fi­dence in NATO. The arti­cle begins:

An increas­ing num­ber of drone incur­sions in EU air­space are quick­ly exploit­ed by the pro-Rus­sia infor­ma­tion cam­paigns to shape pub­lic per­cep­tion. Google Threat Intel­li­gence Team (GTIG) observed mul­ti­ple cam­paigns sow­ing dis­trust in local gov­ern­ments and reduc­ing pub­lic sup­port for Ukraine. Pro-Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns aim to con­vince EU cit­i­zens that their gov­ern­ments are unable to defend their own air­space, erod­ing trust in NATO and under­min­ing sup­port for Ukraine. Mul­ti­ple Rus­sia-linked actors, includ­ing Por­tal Kom­bat, Dop­pel­ganger, and Nieza­leżny Dzi­en­nik Poli­ty­czny, exploit­ed the report­ed incur­sion of Russ­ian drones into Pol­ish air­space in Sep­tem­ber 2025, GTIG has found. Accord­ing to the BBC report, at least three Russ­ian drones vio­lat­ing the air­space were shot down at the time.

Read more: https://cybernews.com/security/kremlin-drones-in-eu-airspace-leveraged-for-psychological-warfare/

Key Points

• Pro-Russ­ian infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions actors dis­sem­i­nat­ed mul­ti­ple fab­ri­cat­ed arti­cles through an estab­lished online ecosys­tem con­sist­ing of a net­work of fake media domains and social media accounts to exploit drone incidents.
• Por­tal Kom­bat pro­pa­gan­da net­work claimed drones could not reach Poland from Rus­sia, accused Poland and Baltic states of politi­ciz­ing the issue to derail Rus­sia-US nego­ti­a­tions, and assert­ed video evi­dence was fake.
• Dop­pel­ganger oper­a­tions dis­sem­i­nat­ed con­tent in mul­ti­ple lan­guages claim­ing Pol­ish cit­i­zens do not sup­port Ukraine pol­i­cy and that Euro­pean reac­tions were hyper­in­flat­ed efforts to intim­i­date Euro­peans into con­flict with Russia.
• Google Threat Intel­li­gence Team warns that NATO allied coun­tries remain high-pri­or­i­ty tar­gets for Rus­sia-aligned influ­ence activ­i­ties that manip­u­late audi­ences and under­mine soci­ety’s abil­i­ty to estab­lish fact-based under­stand­ing of threats.

Russia Disinformation EU: False Narratives and AI-Driven Campaigns Exposed

Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns tar­get­ing the Euro­pean Union deploy sophis­ti­cat­ed false nar­ra­tives and coor­di­nat­ed meth­ods to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and pub­lic trust. The Strate­gic Cul­ture Foun­da­tion oper­ates as a for­eign pol­i­cy jour­nal spread­ing far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries while claim­ing Ukraine, Esto­nia, and even the Euro­pean Union itself are run by Nazis. EUvs­Dis­in­fo char­ac­ter­izes these nar­ra­tives as false­ly por­tray­ing every major inci­dent as Amer­i­can false flag oper­a­tions while glo­ri­fy­ing Russ­ian mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties. Oper­a­tion Under­cut employs AI-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and imper­son­ates legit­i­mate news out­lets to spread dis­in­for­ma­tion across mul­ti­ple Euro­pean lan­guages, link­ing Ukraine’s mil­i­tary aid to con­tentious issues like the Israel-Gaza con­flict to deep­en social divisions.

Beyond AI-enhanced fab­ri­ca­tions, Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion relies on recy­cling proven false claims across dif­fer­ent con­texts. Pro­pa­gan­da about bogus bioweapon labs in Ukraine was copy-past­ed direct­ly from sim­i­lar fake sto­ries pre­vi­ous­ly used to dis­cred­it legit­i­mate bio­log­i­cal research in Geor­gia and Kaza­khstan. A Russ­ian Telegram chan­nel called “War on Fakes” presents itself as debunk­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion while actu­al­ly spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da under the façade of fact-check­ing, grow­ing to over 625,000 sub­scribers with 30 mil­lion dai­ly views. The chan­nel exclu­sive­ly refers to Rus­si­a’s inva­sion as a “spe­cial oper­a­tion” in accor­dance with Krem­lin pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing use of “war” or “inva­sion” terminology.

Plat­form manip­u­la­tion enables mass dis­sem­i­na­tion of coor­di­nat­ed false nar­ra­tives across Euro­pean audi­ences. Net­works of auto­mat­ed web­sites repub­lish legit­i­mate news arti­cles with slight mod­i­fi­ca­tions that inject dis­in­for­ma­tion, such as false­ly accus­ing the Unit­ed States of killing Ukrain­ian ser­vice mem­bers with coro­n­avirus vac­cines. RT covert­ly finances sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent video blog­gers who pro­mote pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives to West­ern audi­ences, with one YouTube chan­nel receiv­ing over $180,000 while claim­ing inde­pen­dence. Research exam­in­ing Ger­man-lan­guage Face­book groups reveals that COVID-19 skep­tics, anti-vaxxers, and right-wing pop­ulists prove par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da nar­ra­tives. Social Europe analy­sis iden­ti­fies spe­cif­ic Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion tac­tics includ­ing Dop­pel­gänger oper­a­tions that clone authen­tic Euro­pean media out­lets and sleep­er web­sites that build audi­ences via unre­lat­ed posts before switch­ing to coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion campaigns.

Exter­nal References:
— EUvs­Dis­in­fo: Detect­ing, analysing, and rais­ing aware­ness about disinformation
— Rus­sia, dis­in­for­ma­tion and Europe’s bat­tle for truth — Social Europe
— Russ­ian Dis­in­for­ma­tion Tar­gets the Euro­pean Union — Jamestown Foundation

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.