Massive Russian Disinformation Campaign in Czech Republic Exposed

Vox­pot brings an exclu­sive data inves­ti­ga­tion into who and why in the Czech Repub­lic sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly spreads dis­in­for­ma­tion and con­spir­a­cies for the Krem­lin and helps polit­i­cal forces that pro­mote its inter­ests. Even though such actions are crim­i­nal, the Czech gov­ern­ment is afraid to inter­vene against them. Trans­la­tions of tens of thou­sands of mes­sages from sanc­tioned Russ­ian web­sites are flow­ing into the Czech Repub­lic. This is a wide­spread vio­la­tion of the law, which the Czech author­i­ties are aware of but have no will to inter­vene against. Cur­rent­ly, the largest Czech dis­in­for­ma­tion web­site claims that it does not com­ply with Czech or Euro­pean laws. Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion is being mas­sive­ly spread, among oth­ers, by actors con­nect­ed to the SPD movement.

Read more: https://www.voxpot.cz/ruska-kampan-v-cesku-je-mnohem-vetsi-nez-jste-si-mysleli/

Key Points

• Vox­pot con­duct­ed the most exten­sive data analy­sis of Czech dis­in­for­ma­tion web­sites to date, map­ping the com­plete his­to­ry of the 16 largest sites, rep­re­sent­ing a total of 360,000 arti­cles over the last 25 years.
• The Finan­cial Ana­lyt­i­cal Office of the Min­istry of Finance con­firmed that web­site oper­a­tors face a fine of up to 50 mil­lion crowns or up to eight years in prison for pub­lish­ing con­tent from sanc­tioned Russ­ian websites.
• The dis­in­for­ma­tion scene pro­duces an aver­age of 120 arti­cles per day, with ten of them com­mon­ly being direct trans­la­tions of Russ­ian state pro­pa­gan­da or arti­cles that ref­er­ence infor­ma­tion from it.
• Three sources from the state admin­is­tra­tion who wished to remain anony­mous stat­ed that the Czech gov­ern­ment is aware of this ongo­ing vio­la­tion of the law but lacks polit­i­cal will to inter­vene against the spread­ers, espe­cial­ly before the Octo­ber elections.

Russia’s Influence Operations in the Czech Republic: From Vrbětice Sabotage to Political Subversion

Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions in the Czech Repub­lic esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing Prague’s 2021 rev­e­la­tion that GRU mil­i­tary intel­li­gence orches­trat­ed the 2014 Vrbětice ammu­ni­tion depot explo­sions, which killed two Czech nation­als and destroyed weapons des­tined for Ukraine. Czech dis­in­for­ma­tion sources pushed staunch­ly pro-Krem­lin cov­er­age fol­low­ing the diplo­mat­ic clash, ampli­fy­ing Russ­ian nar­ra­tives that dis­missed Czech gov­ern­ment find­ings as attempts to score points in Wash­ing­ton’s sanc­tions war. The explo­sions were car­ried out by the same GRU Unit 29155 operatives—Alexander Mishkin and Ana­toly Chepiga—responsible for the 2018 Sal­is­bury nerve agent attack, demon­strat­ing coor­di­nat­ed sab­o­tage oper­a­tions across Europe tar­get­ing weapons sup­plies to Ukrain­ian forces.

The Krem­lin’s dis­in­for­ma­tion response fol­lowed estab­lished pat­terns of dam­age con­trol: knee-jerk denial of wrong­do­ing, attri­bu­tion of charges to West­ern Rus­so­pho­bia, and mass pro­duc­tion of alter­na­tive expla­na­tions. These sources fre­quent­ly ampli­fy Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives and sup­port domes­tic polit­i­cal actors includ­ing the far-right SPD par­ty, the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, and noto­ri­ous­ly Putin-friend­ly Czech Pres­i­dent Miloš Zeman, who served from 2013 to 2023. Czech intel­li­gence firms doc­u­ment­ed how pro-Krem­lin out­lets imme­di­ate­ly deployed famil­iar templates—claiming the inci­dent was Amer­i­can provo­ca­tion, alleg­ing Czech author­i­ties were ruled by Anglo-Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agen­cies, and sug­gest­ing com­pen­sa­tion claims vin­di­cat­ed Rus­si­a’s des­ig­na­tion of Czechia as an unfriend­ly country.

The return of bil­lion­aire pop­ulist Andrej Babiš to pow­er rep­re­sents a strate­gic vic­to­ry for Russ­ian influ­ence in Cen­tral Europe. Babiš’s ANO move­ment claimed its most sig­nif­i­cant elec­tion vic­to­ry in Octo­ber 2025 by blam­ing the rul­ing coali­tion for eco­nom­ic prob­lems while promis­ing to end Czech sup­port for Ukraine. The pop­ulist leader plans to aban­don the inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized Czech ini­tia­tive to acquire artillery shells for Ukraine and oppos­es NATO’s defense spend­ing com­mit­ments, posi­tion­ing him­self along­side Hun­gary’s Vik­tor Orbán and Slo­va­ki­a’s Robert Fico as lead­ers who refuse mil­i­tary aid to Kyiv.

Babiš’s polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry illus­trates the sophis­ti­ca­tion of long-term influ­ence cultivation—the for­mer Com­mu­nist Par­ty mem­ber who drew com­par­isons to Don­ald Trump joined forces with Orbán to cre­ate Patri­ots for Europe, a hard-right Euro­pean Par­lia­ment alliance crit­i­cal of EU migra­tion and cli­mate poli­cies. His cam­paign suc­cess­ful­ly exploit­ed eco­nom­ic griev­ances by ridi­cul­ing Prime Min­is­ter Petr Fiala for being “a bet­ter prime min­is­ter of Ukraine than of Czechia,” rhetoric that res­onat­ed with vot­ers frus­trat­ed by ener­gy crises and infla­tion. With­out a par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty, Babiš’s minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment requires tac­it sup­port from the Free­dom and Direct Democ­ra­cy anti-migrant par­ty, fur­ther entrench­ing nation­al­ist pop­ulism hos­tile to Euro­pean inte­gra­tion and Ukrain­ian defense.

Czech coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence esti­mates that Russ­ian gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions con­trol approx­i­mate­ly 40 Czech-lan­guage web­sites pre­sent­ing rad­i­cal views, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and inac­cu­rate reports designed to sow doubts about demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance. Pro-Russ­ian web­sites, includ­ing Sput­nik and Par­la­ment­ní listy, func­tion as pri­ma­ry vec­tors for nar­ra­tives attempt­ing to change pub­lic per­cep­tion while brib­ing local politi­cians and build­ing neg­a­tive images of the Euro­pean Union and NATO. These coor­di­nat­ed infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions aim to dis­cour­age demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion while exploit­ing his­tor­i­cal Czech-Russ­ian dynam­ics. Despite the trau­mat­ic lega­cy of the 1968 Sovi­et inva­sion that con­tin­ues to shape Czech dis­trust of Moscow, Russ­ian influ­ence net­works main­tain per­sis­tent oper­a­tions through alter­na­tive media chan­nels, social media manip­u­la­tion, and polit­i­cal cul­ti­va­tion tar­get­ing approx­i­mate­ly four per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion that reg­u­lar­ly con­sumes and spreads Krem­lin narratives.

Exter­nal References:
— Czechs Del­uged by Russ­ian Dis­in­for­ma­tion After Spy Brawl — CEPA
— How a spy net­work fueled Rus­si­a’s hybrid war against Czechia — Expats.cz
— From tanks to sab­o­tage: How Rus­sia nev­er left Czechia alone — Radio Prague International
— Czech Republic–Russia rela­tions — Wikipedia
— 2014 Vrbětice ammu­ni­tion ware­house explo­sions — Wikipedia

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.