Russia Shifts to Information Warfare with Propaganda Boost

Rus­sia is shift­ing toward infor­ma­tion war­fare in its 2026 bud­get, cut­ting mil­i­tary spend­ing while dra­mat­i­cal­ly increas­ing fund­ing for pro­pa­gan­da. On 6 Novem­ber 2025, the Jamestown Foun­da­tion report­ed that Rus­si­a’s draft bud­get reduces mil­i­tary spend­ing by $2.4 bil­lion com­pared to 2025 while increas­ing state-run media fund­ing by 54 per­cent, sig­nal­ing inten­si­fied infor­ma­tion war­fare using AI-gen­er­at­ed con­tent to tar­get domes­tic, West­ern, and Ukrain­ian audi­ences. The arti­cle begins:

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin shows no sign of giv­ing up on his war against Ukraine despite lim­it­ed bat­tle­field gains. As Rus­sia begins to expe­ri­ence a short­age of cer­tain types of mil­i­tary equip­ment, its pro­pa­gan­da machine con­tin­ues unabat­ed and may have even expand­ed. Ukraine’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs, Andrii Sybi­ha, stat­ed that Rus­si­a’s draft bud­get for 2026 would reduce mil­i­tary spend­ing by approx­i­mate­ly $2.4 bil­lion com­pared to 2025, while increas­ing fund­ing for state-run media by 54 per­cent, an addi­tion­al $458 mil­lion. In Sybi­ha’s opin­ion, this draft bud­get realign­ment shows that the Krem­lin is pri­or­i­tiz­ing infor­ma­tion­al war­fare going forward.

Read more: https://jamestown.org/kremlin-shifts-focus-to-information-warfare/

Key Points

• Rus­si­a’s draft 2026 bud­get cuts mil­i­tary spend­ing by $2.4 bil­lion com­pared to 2025 while increas­ing state-run media fund­ing by 54 per­cent with an addi­tion­al $458 mil­lion, sig­nal­ing the Krem­lin is pri­or­i­tiz­ing infor­ma­tion war­fare over kinet­ic operations.
• The Krem­lin increas­ing­ly uti­lizes arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pro­duce media for influ­ence oper­a­tions, spread­ing fake videos alleged­ly filmed by Ukrain­ian sol­diers, most­ly gen­er­at­ed using neur­al net­works, to call for sur­ren­der or deser­tion among AFU troops.
• Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da cre­ates graph­ics and videos mim­ic­k­ing pro-Ukrain­ian sources in large num­bers, pri­mar­i­ly on Tik­Tok, to attract Ukrain­ian sub­scribers, then spreads infor­ma­tion about alleged­ly cat­a­stroph­ic loss­es in the Armed Forces of Ukraine after build­ing their base.
• Krem­lin-fund­ed media tar­gets West­ern audi­ences, attempt­ing to con­vince them that Rus­sia remains a super­pow­er, with spe­cial envoy Kir­ill Dmitriev claim­ing new gas sanc­tions have absolute­ly no effect on Rus­si­a’s econ­o­my but will lead to high­er US gas prices.

Russia Information Operations: Inside the Kremlin’s Digital Influence Campaign

Rus­si­a’s infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions have esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly as the Krem­lin has dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased spend­ing on for­eign influ­ence oper­a­tions, with Rossotrud­nich­est­vo allo­cat­ing 1.5 times more resources in 2025 to expand its net­work of loy­al young lead­ers, jour­nal­ists, and blog­gers abroad. Rus­si­a’s infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions infra­struc­ture signed con­tracts total­ing 412 mil­lion rubles for pro­grams tar­get­ing for­eign­ers, pre­dom­i­nant­ly through the Novoe Pokole­nie ini­tia­tive that brings for­eign activists and jour­nal­ists to Rus­sia for pro­pa­gan­da train­ing. Rus­sia tripled spend­ing on pro­mot­ing the Russ­ian lan­guage abroad to 1.8 bil­lion rubles while sup­ply­ing rewrit­ten his­to­ry text­books jus­ti­fy­ing the Ukraine inva­sion to schools world­wide. These Russ­ian infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions com­ple­ment an aggres­sive infor­ma­tion war­fare cam­paign that has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed AI lan­guage mod­els and Wikipedia entries with pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives across more than 80 coun­tries through the Prav­da network.

The Krem­lin’s infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions have grown increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed in tar­get­ing Euro­pean polit­i­cal process­es. Tens of thou­sands of trans­lat­ed mes­sages from sanc­tioned Russ­ian web­sites flowed into the Czech Repub­lic, with Rus­si­a’s dis­in­for­ma­tion web­sites pro­duc­ing more arti­cles dai­ly than major Czech media hous­es. Sim­i­lar­ly, Poland expe­ri­enced an unprece­dent­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion tsuna­mi fol­low­ing a Russ­ian drone incur­sion, gen­er­at­ing approx­i­mate­ly 200,000 social media mes­sages from Russ­ian and Belaru­sian accounts with­in hours. Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts doc­u­ment­ed Rus­si­a’s coor­di­nat­ed cam­paigns that blamed NATO or Ukraine for inci­dents at rates exceed­ing 200 men­tions per minute. Beyond imme­di­ate cri­sis response, Rus­si­a’s infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions have deployed mul­ti­fac­eted cam­paigns to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es through coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion, illic­it financ­ing, and dig­i­tal manip­u­la­tion across Roma­nia, Moldo­va, and oth­er East­ern Euro­pean nations.

Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions increas­ing­ly lever­age dig­i­tal plat­forms to ampli­fy man­u­fac­tured nar­ra­tives and manip­u­late pub­lic dis­course. Rus­si­a’s Dop­pel­gänger cam­paign clones renowned media out­lets by pur­chas­ing sim­i­lar domains and imi­tat­ing their lay­out, allow­ing Russ­ian infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions actors to make pro­pa­gan­da appear as legit­i­mate jour­nal­ism. The Social Design Agency fab­ri­cat­ed 33.9 mil­lion social media com­ments in just the first third of 2024, tar­get­ing eco­nom­ic anx­i­eties and anti-immi­gra­tion sen­ti­ment to sup­port far-right par­ties across Europe.

State broad­cast­er RT has expand­ed Rus­si­a’s infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions despite EU sanc­tions, estab­lish­ing new offices in Ser­bia while oper­at­ing through proxy net­works of video blog­gers who spread pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives while con­ceal­ing their ties to Rus­sia. These coor­di­nat­ed Rus­sia infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions rep­re­sent a strate­gic com­mit­ment to reshape Euro­pean polit­i­cal land­scapes through infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion, with France iden­ti­fy­ing near­ly 80 Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns between August 2023 and March 2025 pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ing Ukraine and its allies.

Exter­nal References:
• Rus­sia spends over $1 bil­lion annu­al­ly on dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns — Euro­maid­an Press
• We’re Win­ning, Say Rus­si­a’s Dis­in­for­ma­tion Cam­paigns — CEPA
• Rus­sia behind dozens of dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns tar­get­ing Ukraine and allies, France says — France 24

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.