Securing Democracy Dispatch

With foreign information manipulation and interference posing a growing threat to democracies worldwide, how should the EU adapt? ASD Senior Manager for Europe and Fellow Vassilis Ntousas will moderate GMF’s virtual discussion on this topic on Tuesday, March 25 at 11:30 am EST/16:30 CET. Register here!

In elections and referendums last year, Moldovans were asked again to choose their country’s direction between West and East. However, an analysis of search engine results in Romanian and Russian, the country’s two main languages, showed some level of informational crossover, Open-Source Intelligence Analyst Larissa Doroshenko finds.

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• Ceasefire Negotiations: Russian officials and state media celebrated the “historic” phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. Sputnik wrote that the cessation of US intelligence sharing and foreign military aid for Ukraine is a key prerequisite for resolving the war diplomatically. Russian propagandist Vladimir Soloviev elaborated, claiming that, according to Putin’s demands, mobilization and rearmament of the Ukrainian Armed Forces must also stop during the proposed ceasefire. The Kremlin underlined that a peaceful, long-lasting resolution must eliminate the root causes of “the Ukrainian crisis” and acknowledge Russia’s security concerns. Lenta.ru concluded that bilateral relations between the United States and Russia have “enormous potential”.
• Protests in Belgrade: Russian propaganda outlets depicted last weekend’s protests in Serbia’s capital as provocations orchestrated by the West to replace the country’s leadership. RT alleged that protesters used pyrotechnics, flares, and smoke bombs, attacking police officers and inciting disorder. Sputnik Serbia reported that police found Molotov cocktails, clubs, and masks in the center of Belgrade, while TASS emphasized that Serbian police issued a final warning before “a forceful intervention”. The Russian Embassy in Serbia declared that “organizers of shadow-colored revolutions” were interested in destabilizing the situation in the country to replace its leaders with “more obedient” ones who would join EU anti-Russian sanctions and recognize Kosovo’s independence.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• VoA Shutdown: PRC messaging supported the Trump administration’s decision to defund the agency overseeing US media outlets, including Voice of America (VoA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesperson called out the outlets’ “blemished track record on China coverage”. The PRC Consul General in Osaka, Japan mocked the response of RFA’s “ideologically sinister CEO” as “the final cry of a dying dog”. The Global Times predicted VoA would “ultimately become a laughingstock of the times” and denounced the outlet as “propaganda poison”. CGTN relayed comments made by Kari Lake, whom Trump tapped to lead VoA, declaring that the agency was “not salvageable”. CCTV criticized VoA as “ideological infiltration under the guise of ‘promoting democracy and freedom’”.
• Drug Wars: Last week, PRC diplomats continued to push back forcefully against the idea that the PRC bears some responsibility for the US drug epidemic. An MFA spokesperson and the PRC Embassy in Kenya defended their country’s “resolute measures against drug trafficking”, with the PRC Embassy in the United States adding that “China’s painful memories of the Opium Wars” shaped the country’s “deep aversion” to drugs. PRC diplomats in Beijing, Washington, and Osaka claimed that the United States was solely to blame for its drug problems. PRC embassies in Brazil, El Salvador, Greece, Iraq, Ireland, Kenya, Somalia, and others all insisted that tariffs would not help fight the fentanyl crisis.

US government severs funding to pro-democracy media sources worldwide: The Trump administration cut contracts to several international pro-democracy broadcasters supervised by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), including VoA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), that were credited with helping the United States combat its adversaries’ narratives worldwide. Senior Fellow Bret Schafer told the Dispatch, “USAGM probably was in need of some reforms, but to abruptly shutter bureaus and label them as ‘fake news’ was yet another gift to our adversaries, as evidenced by the gleeful reactions from Beijing and Moscow to news of its demise.”

Russian influence network operates fake New Zealand news sites: The Russia-based influence operation known as “Pravda” established two faux New Zealand-focused news sites, including one in the language of New Zealand’s indigenous Māori community, repackaging content from state-media sites such as Sputnik and enlisting artificial intelligence (AI) for translations. Investigative Data and Research Analyst Peter Benzoni said, “We’ve described the Pravda network sites as drones of information warfare—ineffective alone, but terrifying en masse, and that’s truer than ever. An investigation by NewsGuard showed recently that this network successfully influenced AI chatbots about a third of time. Pair this with low-resource languages, and any future AI models trained on web articles in, say, Māori can be poisoned by their efforts, nearly always returning the Russian perspective.”

Polish, Lithuanian authorities allege Kremlin involvement in 2024 arson attacks: Polish police arrested a man for setting fire to a Warsaw supermarket last April at the order of Russian security services. Lithuanian prosecutors also accused Russian military intelligence of directing arson against an IKEA store in Vilnius last May, reportedly in part because the store’s blue-and-yellow insignia matches Ukraine’s national colors; this incident could be connected to another fire that ravaged Warsaw’s biggest shopping center in the same month, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. Research Analyst Etienne Soula said, “These arson attacks fit a growing pattern of Russian kinetic operations: deliberate acts of sabotage designed to destabilize European societies while maintaining plausible deniability. By openly targeting civilian infrastructure, Moscow is escalating its hybrid warfare strategy, blending physical disruptions with information manipulation to undermine public trust. European governments must realize that such attacks are becoming a normalized tool of Russian interference and react to these threats more forcefully.”

In Case You Missed It (One-liners)

• Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong raised concerns with PRC officials about anonymous letters mailed from Hong Kong to multiple residents of Melbourne, Australia that outlined a police reward for information on an Australian citizen and activist wanted in Hong Kong for his role in pro-democracy protests there.
• Russia and other nation-state actors have increasingly worked with organized criminal networks to execute kinetic operations in Europe, including arson, sabotage, cyberattacks, and human smuggling, according to a Europol assessment.
• Seventeen EU member states have yet to implement the European Commission’s recommendations to phase out Chinese-owned Huawei and ZTE from their telecommunications networks, according to a new report.
• A recent Danish cybersecurity agency threat assessment warned of an increase in state-sponsored cyber espionage targeting European telecommunications.
• A US technology board instructed the removal of “AI safety”, “responsible AI”, and “AI fairness” and the addition of language that stresses “economic competitiveness” from guidelines it gives to scientists working with the US AI Safety Institute.

“The Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years. Handing our adversaries a win would make them stronger and America weaker.”

—RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus in a statement released after the USAGM announced termination of RFE/RL’s federal grant agreement.

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.