Russia has long been waging operations against democracies using all of the asymmetric tools ASD tracks—information manipulation, cyberattacks, malign finance, civil society subversion, and state economic coercion. The Kremlin’s geographic scope in conducting operations to undermine democracy continues to expand and its tactics continue to evolve. Find ASD’s work on Russia’s attempts to interfere in democracies on this page.
Interference Matters
Catch Me If EU Can: How RT and Sputnik Evade EU Content Bans
Caught in the Spider’s Web: Military Bloggers Revealed Gaps in Russia’s Military and Information Defense
Ukraine’s operation, “Spider’s Web”, took the Kremlin by surprise and sent shockwaves from targeted military airfields to destinations far away from the frontline. Even though the final number of destroyed and damaged military planes decreased by ha [...]
Catch Me If EU Can: How RT and Sputnik Evade EU Content Bans
It has been well documented that Russian state media outlets have developed various ways to circumvent EU sanctions to continue reaching audiences in Europe. This often includes the use of mirror sites—identical copies of Russian state media website [...]
Taming the Rising Lion: Alignment of Iranian, Russian, and Chinese Narratives on the Israel-Iran Conflict
Dubbing it “Operation Rising Lion”, Israel has launched widespread airstrikes across Iran, hitting key nuclear facilities and killing several military commanders and intensifying decades of hostility between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Given Iran’s long-st [...]
Russia’s Messages in English and Spanish Differ on Los Angeles Protests, Krystyna Sikora and Peter Benzoni Tell Factchequeado (in Spanish)
ASD researchers Krystyna Sikora and Peter Benzoni told Factchequeado how Russian messaging differed depending on whether the Kremlin wrote in English or Spanish in response to protests in Los Angeles, California about US President Donald Trump's imm [...]
New Proxy, Same as the Old Proxy: Key Sites of Russia’s Covert Influence in Poland
Poland was one of the first countries to take steps to curb Russian propaganda in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Days after the invasion, Poland’s broadcasting regulator banned five Russian outlets—including RT and Sputnik—on c [...]
Italy Remains on Russia’s Radar
In March, Russian political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes credited as a source of inspiration behind the Kremlin, spoke to the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. He predicted an interesting development in Italian politics: Prime Ministe [...]
Venezuela Through the Sino-Russian Media Playbook
Russia and China’s information operations in Venezuela have been extensively discussed and documented. Their media strategy has involved forming partnerships with ideologically aligned national and regional outlets such as TeleSUR, promoting revisio [...]
Searching for Geopolitical Direction: The Sources Russian and Romanian Speakers Encountered on Search Engines Prior to Moldova’s 2024 Votes
Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova has oscillated between East and West, or between closer ties with Russia or the EU. Last fall, the country faced this existential question once again. Moldovans went to the polls to selec [...]
David Salvo Discusses Recent Ukraine Negotiations on DW News
Co-Managing Director David Salvo joined DW News to discuss recent negotiations around the war in Ukraine held in Saudi Arabia and what might come of them. The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone. [...]
Media Vassalage: How Venezuela’s TeleSUR Acts as Russia and China’s Information-Laundering Front
After a contested July presidential election in which Nicolás Maduro claimed victory with 51% of the vote—amid allegations of irregularities, limited oversight, and too few international observers—Venezuela was thrown into turmoil. The Carter Center [...]
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference, or what the EU now calls FIMI (foreign information manipulation and interference), has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, ASD has identified cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and [...]
No Bahn on RT: How RT Deutsch Stays on Track Despite Content Bans
This is part two of a two-part series on how RT Deutsch content is evading domain bans and sanctions published in partnership with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Find part one here. Germans head to the polls on Sunday not only to decide who [...]