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
French Election Dashboard Toplines: March 14–20, 2022
Highlights Despite being less than a month away from the first round of the presidential election in France, the elections have received far less coverage in state-backed media outlets than the war in Ukraine and other topics. None of the top 10 key [...]
Kristine Berzina Discusses French Companies Continuing Operations in Russia Despite Sanctions on France 24
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used an address to France's parliament on Wednesday to call on French companies still working in Russia to "stop sponsoring" the Kremlin's aggression against his country. Kristine Berzina, Senior Fellow at the [...]
Kristine Berzina Discusses Biden’s Trip to Europe on Bloomberg Markets
Caroline Hyde, Taylor Riggs & Katie Greifeld discuss one topic from three different angles after the closing bell on Wall Street. Today's show tackles Biden's trip to Europe Guests Today: Kristine Berzina of German Marshall Fund's Alliance for S [...]
Democratic States Impose Strong Sanctions on Russia
For years, the United States has sought to use sanctions to achieve several aims related to Russia, including preventing, deterring, and punishing 1) the strategic corruption that President Vladimir Putin uses to advance Russian foreign policy, 2) h [...]
Bret Schafer Quoted in the New York Times: How Russia and Right-Wing Americans Converged on War in Ukraine
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, some members of the far-right media in the United States have been echoing Kremlin talking points and conspiracy theories justifying the war. By parroting and feeding Kremlin narratives, the far-right has provi [...]
Zack Cooper Discusses Russia’s War in Ukraine on War on the Rocks
Chris, Melanie, and Zack discuss Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They explain what has been surprising to each of them thus far in the conflict. Why has Russia struggled so mightily? Why has Ukraine fought so effectively? And why have the Unit [...]
Hamilton Toplines: March 14–March 20, 2022
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week promoted new evidence to support their conspiracy narrative about the presence of U.S.-funded bioweapon labs in Ukraine, though the number of tweets from Russian propagandists with the term “biologi [...]
Kristine Berzina Assesses the State of U.S.-Russia Diplomatic Ties on NewsNation
Alliance for Securing Democracy's Kristine Berzina says ties between Moscow and Washington have been on shaky ground for years. [...]
David Salvo Discusses Putin’s Next Move in Ukraine on Bloomberg
David Salvo, Deputy Director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, discusses the Ukraine War. He spoke with Bloomberg's David Westin. Â [...]
Russia’s War in Ukraine: Lessons for Taiwan
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine serves as a reminder for democracies big and small of the stakes of maintaining free and open societies in the face of rising illiberalism, autocracy, and totalitarianism. And despite the seemingly insurmountable odds fo [...]
Laura Thornton Quoted in the New York Times: Truth is Another Front in Putin’s War
Nearly a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin has continued to spread outlandish, illogical narratives to justify the war. While disinformation during wartime is not a new phenomenon, it has reached new heights and audiences in the social [...]
Bret Schafer Assesses the Effectiveness of Putin’s Disinformation on Ukraine on Deep Dish
For the last three weeks, people around the world have been watching the war in Ukraine unfold on their phones, intimately observing live footage of the conflict’s devastation alongside rampant fake news from Russia claiming the war isn’t real. Disi [...]