NATO Official Warns Russian Hybrid Warfare Includes Disinformation Attacks

NATO mem­bers, espe­cial­ly those in Europe, are grow­ing increas­ing­ly con­cerned about a wave of sus­pect­ed hybrid attacks from Rus­sia in recent months. They include cyber­at­tacks, dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, and drone harass­ment. As part of this alleged inter­fer­ence, air­ports in coun­tries includ­ing Den­mark and Ger­many have been forced to shut down in recent weeks due to sight­ings of uniden­ti­fied drones, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant delays for pas­sen­gers. Euro­pean offi­cials say the aim is to cause dis­rup­tion to every­day life and dam­age the morale of Euro­pean cit­i­zens. In an inter­view with Euronews, Man­fred Boudreaux-Dehmer, NATO’s first Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer (CIO), esti­mates that these attacks are like­ly to become more fre­quent in the future.

Read more: https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/15/hybrid-warfare-has-begun-senior-nato-official-tells-euronews

Key Points

• Euro­pean offi­cials say Rus­si­a’s hybrid attacks, com­bin­ing cyber­at­tacks, dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, and drone harass­ment, aim to cause dis­rup­tion to every­day life and dam­age the morale of Euro­pean citizens.
• NATO’s Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer stat­ed the war of the future is no longer a kinet­ic war on the bat­tle­field, with the alliance spend­ing sig­nif­i­cant time and effort prepar­ing for the hybrid war com­bin­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal threats.
• Boudreaux-Dehmer warned that tech­nol­o­gy is evolv­ing and that adver­saries will use new tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties, includ­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion tools, requir­ing NATO to con­stant­ly pre­pare and respond to emerg­ing hybrid threats.
• NATO estab­lished a new cyber defence cen­tre in Bel­gium as a fun­da­men­tal build­ing block to ensure the alliance is increas­ing­ly pre­pared for cyber attacks and oth­er types of hybrid war­fare, includ­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion operations.

Russian Disinformation Operations Target European NATO Countries Through Hybrid Warfare

Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion oper­a­tions tar­get­ing Euro­pean NATO coun­tries have inten­si­fied dra­mat­i­cal­ly since 2022, employ­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed hybrid war­fare tac­tics that com­bine cyber-enabled cam­paigns, social media manip­u­la­tion, and polit­i­cal cul­ti­va­tion to desta­bi­lize demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions across the alliance. Czech author­i­ties doc­u­ment­ed tens of thou­sands of mes­sages from sanc­tioned Russ­ian web­sites flow­ing into the coun­try, with dis­in­for­ma­tion out­lets pro­duc­ing more dai­ly arti­cles than the nation’s largest media houses.

Poland expe­ri­enced an unprece­dent­ed assault fol­low­ing a Sep­tem­ber 2024 drone incur­sion, as approx­i­mate­ly 200,000 social media mes­sages blamed Ukraine or NATO for the inci­dent, demon­strat­ing coor­di­nat­ed action between Russ­ian mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and infor­ma­tion war­fare. Ger­many faces par­tic­u­lar vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty through the Alter­na­tive for Ger­many par­ty, where 31 per­cent of Russ­ian-Ger­mans express sup­port for the far-right move­ment that main­tains sys­tem­at­ic ties to Moscow through alleged espi­onage net­works and finan­cial channels.

Beyond elec­toral inter­fer­ence, Rus­sia employs diverse oper­a­tional meth­ods across the alliance’s east­ern flank. The Ghost­writer cam­paign exem­pli­fies cyber-enabled influ­ence oper­a­tions, as state-spon­sored actors tar­get­ed Lithua­nia, Latvia, and Poland with anti-NATO nar­ra­tives through cre­den­tial har­vest­ing attacks against gov­ern­ment, mil­i­tary, and media orga­ni­za­tions. This tech­ni­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion extends to infor­ma­tion laun­der­ing, where Krem­lin-owned out­lets ampli­fied The Baltic Word, grant­i­ng legit­i­ma­cy to fringe dis­in­for­ma­tion sources pre­vi­ous­ly lack­ing credibility.

The oper­a­tions demon­strate long-term strate­gic cul­ti­va­tion, as orga­ni­za­tions asso­ci­at­ed with Russ­ian oper­a­tive Yevge­ny Prigozhin orga­nized seem­ing­ly benign con­fer­ences on eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal issues affect­ing Baltic states and Ger­many, rep­re­sent­ing text­book trade­craft that begins with polit­i­cal­ly uncon­tro­ver­sial top­ics before advanc­ing Krem­lin interests.

Italy presents a dis­tinct case study in Russ­ian pen­e­tra­tion of NATO mem­ber states. An Ital­ian Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tion found pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives in every mid­dle school text­book ana­lyzed, with recur­ring talk­ing points on top­ics rang­ing from Don­bas to Kiev’s his­to­ry poten­tial­ly shap­ing future gen­er­a­tions’ world­views. This edu­ca­tion­al infil­tra­tion com­ple­ments a com­plex pro-Russ­ian net­work involv­ing social media, tele­vi­sion, and news­pa­pers designed to con­di­tion pub­lic opin­ion by attack­ing pro-Ukrain­ian politi­cians while sup­port­ing those advanc­ing Moscow’s agenda.

The net­work includes par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, man­agers, lob­by­ists, and jour­nal­ists, with main­stream tele­vi­sion reg­u­lar­ly fea­tur­ing com­men­ta­tors poten­tial­ly on Putin’s pay­roll. Far-right polit­i­cal par­ties serve as cru­cial vec­tors, as leaked record­ings revealed Mat­teo Salvini’s Lega par­ty asso­ciates dis­cussing chan­nel­ing tens of mil­lions in Russ­ian oil mon­ey through schemes nego­ti­at­ed at Moscow’s Metropol Hotel.

The Czech Repub­lic’s expe­ri­ence illu­mi­nates how Russ­ian oper­a­tions exploit demo­c­ra­t­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties dur­ing crit­i­cal elec­toral peri­ods. State sources con­firmed author­i­ties were aware of ongo­ing law vio­la­tions but lacked polit­i­cal will to inter­vene before par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. This hes­i­ta­tion proved strate­gi­cal­ly con­se­quen­tial, as bil­lion­aire pop­ulist Andrej Babiš’s return to pow­er rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant Russ­ian influ­ence victory.

Babiš’s ANO move­ment promised to end Czech sup­port for Ukraine and aban­don inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized artillery shell pro­cure­ment ini­tia­tives, posi­tion­ing the new gov­ern­ment along­side Hun­gary’s Vik­tor Orbán and Slo­va­ki­a’s Robert Fico as lead­ers refus­ing mil­i­tary aid to Kyiv. Czech intel­li­gence esti­mates that Russ­ian oper­a­tions con­trol approx­i­mate­ly 40 Czech-lan­guage web­sites pre­sent­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and inac­cu­rate reports designed to sow doubt about demo­c­ra­t­ic governance.

Pol­ish resilience against Russ­ian inter­fer­ence demon­strates that deter­mined coun­ter­mea­sures can sig­nif­i­cant­ly mit­i­gate for­eign manip­u­la­tion despite mas­sive oper­a­tional invest­ment. Although intel­li­gence doc­u­ment­ed over 50 inci­dents linked to Russ­ian inter­fer­ence dur­ing 2025 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, most Krem­lin oper­a­tions failed to res­onate with vot­ers who main­tained 86 per­cent threat per­cep­tion of Rus­sia and 92 per­cent sup­port for increased defense spending.

Twen­ty-two Pol­ish-lan­guage Telegram chan­nels with over 150,000 sub­scribers spread pro-Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da, includ­ing staged videos and false claims deny­ing doc­u­ment­ed war crimes. How­ev­er, Poland’s diver­si­fied social media land­scape and com­pre­hen­sive “elec­tion umbrel­la” strat­e­gy proved effec­tive in pro­tect­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es, offer­ing a tem­plate for oth­er NATO mem­bers fac­ing sim­i­lar threats.

Exter­nal References:
— NATO Review: Algo­rith­mic inva­sions — How infor­ma­tion war­fare threat­ens NATO’s east­ern flank
— Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies: Rus­si­a’s Shad­ow War Against the West
— Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice: 3rd EEAS Report on For­eign Infor­ma­tion Manip­u­la­tion and Inter­fer­ence Threats

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.