Pro-Kremlin Bloc Doubles in European Parliament

A pro-Krem­lin bloc in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment has near­ly dou­bled in size. On 26 Novem­ber 2025, Novaya Gaze­ta Europe report­ed that around 84 deputies now rou­tine­ly vote against Rus­sia-crit­i­cal res­o­lu­tions, with a fur­ther 62 abstain­ing, com­pared to 40 oppos­ing in the pre­vi­ous par­lia­ment. The arti­cle begins:

The new Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, elect­ed in June 2024, has shift­ed fur­ther to the right, with con­ser­v­a­tive and nation­al­ist par­ties gain­ing ground and form­ing two new group­ings — Patri­ots for Europe (PfE) and Europe of Sov­er­eign Nations (ESN). Since tak­ing office, the new par­lia­ment has vot­ed on at least 14 res­o­lu­tions con­cern­ing Rus­sia and Ukraine — an ear­ly test of how its fresh line-up approach­es for­eign pol­i­cy. Draw­ing on these vot­ing records, EUob­serv­er and Novaya Gaze­ta Europe have for­mu­lat­ed an updat­ed rank­ing of the most pro-Krem­lin par­ties and MEPs.

Read more: https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/11/26/moscows-minions-en

Key Points

• Ger­many’s Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance leads pro-Krem­lin vot­ing, with almost every vote by its six MEPs either against or in absten­tion on 14 res­o­lu­tions ana­lyzed, joined by a bulk of pro-Krem­lin votes from France’s Rassem­ble­ment Nation­al, Ger­many’s AfD, Hun­gary’s Fidesz, and Italy’s Five Star Movement.
• Rassem­ble­ment Nation­al’s share of votes against and absten­tions on 14 Rus­sia-crit­i­cal res­o­lu­tions climbed back to 67% after drop­ping to 57% fol­low­ing the 2022 inva­sion, sup­port­ing sym­bol­ic texts con­demn­ing his­to­ry fal­si­fi­ca­tion but with­hold­ing back­ing for increased EU aid to Kyiv.
• AfD pro-Krem­lin vote share climbed back to near­ly 90% in the new par­lia­ment after becom­ing less pre­dictable fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary 2022, with Hun­gary’s Fidesz vot­ing against sev­en of 14 res­o­lu­tions after oppos­ing just two of 30 in the pre­vi­ous convocation.
• Slo­va­ki­a’s SMER-SD MEP Ľuboš Bla­ha stands out as the most con­sis­tent Krem­lin sym­pa­thiz­er, jus­ti­fy­ing the 2014 annex­a­tion of Crimea and vis­it­ing Rus­sia twice since becom­ing an MEP in 2024, where he met with Russ­ian for­eign intel­li­gence chief Sergey Naryshkin.

Russia’s Influence Operations in Europe: Elections, Religion, and Far-Right Networks

Rus­si­a’s influ­ence oper­a­tions across Europe have inten­si­fied through a con­ver­gence of elec­tion inter­fer­ence, reli­gious net­works, and far-right polit­i­cal cul­ti­va­tion. The Krem­lin’s cam­paign tar­gets demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es from the Baltics to the Balka­ns, deploy­ing coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion, illic­it financ­ing, and dig­i­tal manip­u­la­tion to desta­bi­lize pro-Euro­pean gov­er­nance. Roma­ni­a’s Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court annulled the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion after intel­li­gence ser­vices uncov­ered mas­sive Tik­Tok-based inter­fer­ence sup­port­ing far-right can­di­date Călin Georges­cu, while Moldo­va faced an esti­mat­ed €200 mil­lion Russ­ian spend­ing cam­paign aimed at derail­ing EU inte­gra­tion. Carnegie Endow­ment analy­sis con­firms this reflects sys­tem­at­ic oper­a­tions designed to man­u­fac­ture elec­toral chaos through phan­tom polls, deep­fake audio, and covert­ly staged recordings.

The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church has emerged as a cor­ner­stone of Krem­lin strat­e­gy for pro­ject­ing soft pow­er across Europe. In the Baltic states, Moscow tar­gets Russ­ian-speak­ing minori­ties through church net­works that ampli­fy mes­sag­ing about tra­di­tion­al val­ues and civ­i­liza­tion­al strug­gle against the West. Esto­ni­a’s par­lia­ment respond­ed by pass­ing leg­is­la­tion requir­ing the Eston­ian Ortho­dox Church to sev­er ties with the Moscow Patri­ar­chate. The Ser­bian Ortho­dox Church sim­i­lar­ly serves as Moscow’s inter­me­di­ary in the Balka­ns, facil­i­tat­ing high-lev­el polit­i­cal coor­di­na­tion when diplo­mat­ic chan­nels prove insufficient.

Beyond reli­gious insti­tu­tions, leaked doc­u­ments reveal oli­garch-backed orga­ni­za­tion Tsar­grad’s cul­ti­va­tion of far-right par­ties in Italy, France, Ger­many, and Aus­tria. Cyber oper­a­tions like Ghost­writer tar­get Baltic audi­ences with anti-NATO nar­ra­tives, while Rossotrud­nich­est­vo trains for­eign jour­nal­ists at RT and Sput­nik. GLOBSEC research con­firms Russ­ian bot net­works deployed Dop­pel­ganger oper­a­tions dur­ing Poland’s 2025 elec­tion, though a strong pub­lic con­sen­sus against pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives lim­it­ed their effec­tive­ness. The EU’s EEAS reports that Rus­sia allo­cat­ed 137 bil­lion rubles for state media in 2025, under­scor­ing the Krem­lin’s com­mit­ment to sus­tained infor­ma­tion war­fare against Euro­pean democracies.

Exter­nal References:
• Moldova’s Elec­tion Is a Test for Russ­ian Influ­ence in Europe – Carnegie Endowment
• 3rd EEAS Report on For­eign Infor­ma­tion Manip­u­la­tion and Interference
• The Krem­lin’s Dou­ble Game: Russ­ian Attempts to Influ­ence Poland’s 2025 Elec­tion – GLOBSEC

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.