A new study has found that former Soviet states and Balkan countries are the primary targets of the Kremlin’s Pravda disinformation network. The Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship at the American University in Bulgaria analyzed over 640,000 publications on the network from December 2024 to March 2025. These countries make up 52% of all publications, despite representing a smaller portion of the population. Moldova, Latvia, and Estonia are the top three most targeted countries, with Serbia and Armenia also in the top five. The study suggests a coordinated effort to spread disinformation in regions strategically important to the Kremlin, as six of the top ten countries host critical energy infrastructure connecting European markets with Russian supplies.
The Pravda network is a set of websites spreading pro-Russia propaganda in different European languages for the past 17 years. Known as Portal Combat, its activities have been disseminating fake news, with initial tracking of its domains and publications starting in 2013. The French Viginum Agency was the first to detect the network, publishing a report in February 2024. Moldova ranks highly in Russian disinformation due to its geography as a boundary between Eastern and Western Europe, political tensions between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions, and as a former Soviet republic with ties to Moscow while seeking closer EU relations. Russia targets Eastern Europe specifically due to long-standing foreign and domestic policy practices.
Russian disinformation campaigns focus on countries closest to it, with specific narratives concerning the war in Ukraine, the US, and NATO. The primary goal is to propagate the false narrative that Russia was forced into invading Ukraine because it had become a US and NATO puppet. Russian disinformation in the Balkans is aimed at placing Russian narratives in a region with aspirations to EU or NATO membership. Disinformation narratives in this region often include anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, amplifying separatist or far-right narratives to divide and stoke anti-EU sentiment. A united Europe poses a threat to Russia’s goals, making the division of the population a strategic move.
To counter Russian disinformation, countries should adopt a whole-of-society approach. Education on information literacy, including media, digital, and AI literacy, is critical for both children and adults to identify and avoid disinformation. Governments should fund agencies and civil society organizations to monitor and combat foreign disinformation. With the collapse of counter-disinformation projects and agencies around the world, vulnerable populations are at risk of falling prey to anti-democratic actors like Russia and China. It is essential for Eastern European countries to invest in tools and initiatives to combat disinformation and safeguard their populations from foreign interference.
