One of the most symbolic moments of the Revolution of Dignity was the tocsin sounded by the bells of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery on the night of 10–11 December 2013, when Viktor Yanukovych’s riot police, the “Berkut,” attempted for the second time to disperse the Maidan. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty recalled that the monastery rang its bells continuously as Berkut units stormed the protest camp. Reuters reported at the time that church bells echoed across the square “as in times of danger a century ago.”
Importantly, St. Michael’s Monastery was not only a symbol, but a real place of refuge. After protesters were brutally beaten on 30 November, Reuters reported that people sought shelter there from Berkut batons. In February 2014, as violence escalated, the monastery became a sanctuary and a temporary aid station for the wounded.
For Ukrainians, the Tocsin of St. Michael’s became a signal of solidarity and mobilization. For Russian and pro-regime propaganda, it became a target for discreditation. Several core narratives were constructed around this episode.
Key narratives promoted against Ukraine and the Maidan included:
- The Maidan was not a popular protest, but a “violent coup.”
- Protesters were “radicals” or “extremists,” not ordinary citizens.
- The Church had “interfered in politics” and “incited rebellion.”
- The crackdown was a “restoration of order,” not violence against a peaceful assembly.
- The events in Kyiv were “externally orchestrated” by the West, rather than a domestic societal response.
These frames — “coup,” “fascists,” “external control” — later became central to pro-Kremlin disinformation about Euromaidan and, subsequently, to justifying aggression against Ukraine. Numerous cases documented by EUvsDisinfo repeat the same formulas about a “Western-backed coup,” “Nazis,” and an “illegitimate government” in Kyiv.
“Maidan was a coup, not a protest.” This narrative conveniently erases the cause of the protests: mass outrage after the suspension of European integration and the use of force against demonstrators. The Tocsin of St. Michael’s tells a different story. At a critical moment, what activated was not a conspiracy, but civic self-organization — an alarm signal that mobilized Kyiv residents. The very fact that bells were needed during a police operation points not to a coup scenario, but to a crisis of legitimacy: a government resorting to coercion against its own citizens.
“The Church unlawfully interfered in politics.” In propaganda logic, this claim aimed to discredit both the Maidan and religious institutions that stood with the people. In reality, the tocsin in this context was прежде всего a signal of danger and solidarity, not a calculated political maneuver. Its meaning was ethical rather than partisan: when force is used against civilians, social institutions respond. In later years, even state institutions recognized this episode as a defining moment of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine’s cultural memory.
“Maidan lacked broad support — it was artificially fueled by organizers.” The Tocsin of St. Michael’s also undermines this claim. The symbolic power of the event lies precisely in what it revealed: Maidan was not merely a stage and political leaders, but a network of horizontal trust linking citizens, the city, volunteers, clergy, and medics. Such mobilization does not occur where genuine public support is absent.
The Tocsin of St. Michael’s was not just an emotional episode. It was an early example of how Moscow and pro-Russian actors sought to rewrite the meaning of Ukrainian events:
- Self-organization was labeled a “rebellion.”
- Solidarity was reframed as “extremism.”
- Protection of civilians was depicted as “manipulation.”
- Civic protest was portrayed as a “Western operation.”
These frames were later scaled up from Maidan to the whole of Ukraine — first to justify the occupation of Crimea, and then broader aggression. In this sense, the Tocsin of St. Michael’s is not only a symbol of the Maidan, but also a key to understanding how anti-Ukrainian propaganda operated even before the open phase of the war.
The shootings of protesters in February 2014 — particularly between 18 and 20 February, with the deadliest violence on 20 February on Instytutska Street in Kyiv — marked the culmination of violence by the Yanukovych regime against participants of the Revolution of Dignity. Dozens of protesters and law enforcement officers were killed by gunfire. Those who lost their lives became known as the Heavenly Hundred. These killings definitively shattered Yanukovych’s legitimacy inside the country and became a point of no return in Ukraine’s modern political history.
- Even before the Maidan triumphed in February 2014, Russia had activated its plan to seize the Crimean Peninsula. One of the most telling details is the Russian medal “For the Liberation of Crimea,” dated 20 February 2014 — at a time when Yanukovych was still in Kyiv and formally remained President of Ukraine.
- Russian propaganda, which had already been spreading narratives about “neo-Nazis” and “Banderites” seizing power in Kyiv, supplemented them with several foundational claims:
- Crimea “has always been Russian,” so its “return” was historically justified.
- The “little green men” were merely local self-defense forces.
- Russian speakers in Crimea needed protection from a “Nazi junta.”
- The “referendum” in Crimea was legitimate and an expression of the people’s will.
- The population of Crimea unanimously supported the “return to the native harbor.”
- The fact that Crimea “returned without bloodshed” proved the “peaceful nature” of the occupation.
- Each of these narratives collapses under scrutiny.
The claim that Crimea is “historically Russian” is easily challenged. While Crimea became part of the Russian Empire in the late 18th century, for centuries before that it was the territory of the Crimean Khanate — an ethnically, culturally, and politically distinct entity. During the revolutionary upheavals of 1917–1920, the indigenous population — the Crimean Tatars — proclaimed their own national state, which was soon destroyed by both White and Red Russian armies. That state even sought negotiations on joining Ukraine, but history took another turn, and much of Eastern Europe later fell under communist Russian domination.
In 1954, Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR for economic and administrative reasons. After Ukraine gained independence, all states — including Russia — recognized Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Some, again including Russia, became formal guarantors of that integrity.
Even this brief overview demonstrates that Crimea’s history is complex and cannot be reduced to the claim that it is “historically Russian.” Moreover, even historically grounded claims do not override international law — and in this case, no such claims were legally valid. As of 2014, Crimea was internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. It remains so today, despite more than a decade of occupation.
The narrative about the “little green men” was aimed primarily at Western audiences in order to avoid immediate accountability. The calculation was simple: European and transatlantic actors might hesitate to respond decisively if the identity of the armed forces remained ambiguous. Vladimir Putin later publicly admitted that these “little green men” were Russian troops. But at the time, Moscow was not certain that such a blatant act of aggression would go unanswered. The manufactured ambiguity reinforced Western hesitation and created space for inaction.
The claim of “protecting Russian speakers” played a crucial mobilizing role inside Russia itself. State propaganda alleged that Kyiv was preparing repression against Russian speakers and that nationalist groups would unleash violence in the streets. In reality, no attacks on Russian speakers in Crimea were documented, and no international mission confirmed any threat of genocide or ethnic cleansing. Even the repeal of the 2012 language law — often cited as proof of discrimination — never entered into force, as Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov did not sign it. The “protection” narrative thus served as a convenient pretext for military aggression.
The supposed legitimacy of the referendum does not withstand serious examination. The “vote” took place under military occupation. Voter rolls were disregarded, individuals without Ukrainian citizenship participated, and reports described widespread “carousel voting,” with the same individuals casting ballots at multiple polling stations. The referendum itself violated Ukraine’s Constitution, which does not permit local referendums on secession. The ballot did not even include the option of maintaining the status quo. Most importantly, a vote conducted under the presence of foreign armed forces cannot be considered legitimate and is legally null.
The claim of overwhelming popular support was another key narrative meant to retroactively justify procedural and legal violations. There is no independent evidence confirming the often-cited figure of 90 percent support. All pro-Ukrainian forces — including the Crimean Tatars, the peninsula’s indigenous people — boycotted the referendum as unlawful. Accounts from key participants in the operation, including Igor Girkin, describe how local deputies were gathered under pressure and compelled to vote for the decision to hold the referendum.
The assertion that Crimea’s occupation was “bloodless” is a direct falsehood intended to reinforce the broader narrative of a peaceful “return.” On 18 March, Russian forces killed Sergeant Serhii Kokurin of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the storming of a military facility in Simferopol. Days earlier, on 15 March, the body of Reshat Ametov, a pro-Ukrainian activist, was found after he had been abducted. They were not the only victims. In the months that followed, Russian security services abducted, tortured, and in some cases killed individuals who opposed the establishment of Russian rule.
The occupation of Crimea became the starting point — in effect, the opening act — of the largest war in Europe since the Second World War. It also served as a testing ground for Russia’s model of hybrid warfare: the use of unmarked military force, legal manipulation, a coordinated information campaign, and the construction of an illusion of “popular initiative.” Unfortunately, this was only the beginning.
After the victory of the Revolution of Dignity and the occupation of Crimea, Russia expanded its information offensive against Ukraine and escalated it into an armed phase in the Donbas. In April 2014, amid the seizure of administrative buildings and the appearance of armed pro-Russian groups in eastern cities, the Ukrainian government launched what it officially termed an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). Even in international reporting at the time, Kyiv consistently used the phrase “anti-terrorist operation,” while Moscow was already promoting the framing of a “civil war” and the “protection of Russian speakers.”
It is important to understand that the term ATO was primarily a legal and operational framework for the state’s initial response — not an accurate description of the scale of the threat. In reality, this was already a Russia-directed hybrid aggression: local collaborators, the transfer of personnel and weapons across the border, coordinated information campaigns, and the denial of direct involvement. This was the defining logic of the period: officially, Moscow insisted “we are not there,” while on the ground Russian-backed armed structures, political stage props in the form of “people’s republics,” and Russian propaganda were fully operational.
At that moment, Russia exploited Ukraine’s political instability and expanded aggression into the Donbas. The country had barely begun transitioning from revolution to institutional recovery when it was forced into war. The army had been weakened by years of underfunding, while society urgently filled frontline needs through volunteer networks — from uniforms and equipment to vehicle repairs and body armor. In 2014, Reuters described the Ukrainian military as “woefully underfunded,” and the volunteer movement as critical to sustaining defense efforts.
Against this backdrop, Russia deployed a classic hybrid model:
- Armed groups without clear accountability.
- “People’s mayors,” “commandants,” and improvised “militias.”
- Pseudo-referendums and quasi-state institutions.
- A massive flow of disinformation targeting domestic Russian audiences, residents of occupied territories, and Western observers.
Early UN reports documented seizures of buildings, abductions, torture, and killings of civilians by armed groups in the Donbas, as well as the disruption of the electoral process in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions due to the unlawful actions of supporters of the self-proclaimed “republics.”
Equally telling was the deliberate “fog of war” Russia maintained. The OSCE mission reported columns of military equipment and armed personnel in uniforms without insignia, as well as the functioning of the so-called “DPR/LPR” structures as de facto administrations in occupied areas. This was not a spontaneous protest movement; it was the infrastructure of a managed conflict.
It was during this period that most of the propaganda constructs later scaled up — and repeated for years, culminating in the full-scale invasion of 2022 — were formed. Among the key narratives:
- “This is not Russian aggression but a civil war.”
- “Russia is not fighting; it merely supports or sympathizes.”
- “The Ukrainian army punishes civilians, while the ‘militia’ protects them.”
- “Russian speakers must be saved from repression or genocide.”
- “The DPR/LPR represent genuine popular will.”
- “Any criticism of Russia is Western propaganda.”
- “Any crime in the conflict zone is impossible to prove.”
A 2014 NATO StratCom study described Russia’s information campaign as massive and systematic, built around central labels applied to Ukraine: “fascist junta,” “Nazis,” “puppet of the West,” “failed state,” alongside constant denial of Russia’s direct involvement. EUvsDisinfo has also documented the persistence of the “Nazi junta” narrative as a recurring element of pro-Kremlin disinformation about post-Maidan authorities.
Let us examine the core claims more closely.
“There is a civil war in the Donbas; Russia has nothing to do with it.” This was perhaps the central narrative of the entire ATO phase. Its purpose was to strip Russia of the status of an aggressor and present the war as an internal Ukrainian conflict. As early as April 2014, Russian leadership publicly spoke of Ukraine being on the “verge of civil war,” while simultaneously promoting the idea of “protecting Russian speakers.”
The weakness of this narrative lay in the structure of the conflict itself. Armed groups, quasi-authorities, centralized propaganda, military logistics, and coordinated denial all pointed to external management. UN and OSCE reports documented signs of violent territorial control and the activities of self-proclaimed entities that bore no resemblance to legitimate local self-government.
“The Kyiv regime is a junta; Ukrainian forces are punitive squads.” This became the emotional backbone of Russian mobilization. After Maidan, the Kremlin systematically linked Ukrainian politics to World War II imagery — “Banderites,” “fascists,” “punishers” — to dehumanize Ukrainians and justify violence against them. The term “punitive operation” was widely promoted in Russia as a counter-label to Ukraine’s “ATO.”
NATO StratCom noted that Russian media described Ukrainian authorities as an “illegal, fascist junta,” and Ukrainian defense forces as “Nazis,” “killers,” and “terrorists.” These were not random insults; they were part of a systematic technique to render any Ukrainian resistance morally illegitimate in the eyes of Russian audiences and some external observers.
“Russian speakers are being saved from repression and genocide.” As in Crimea, this narrative provided a simple emotional formula: Russia was not attacking but “protecting.” Yet already in 2014, international assessments did not confirm claims of systematic or widespread persecution of Russian speakers. Reuters, citing a UN report at the time, explicitly noted that recorded incidents were not systemic or widespread.
In practice, however, armed groups operating under Russian control were responsible for abductions, torture, intimidation, and killings, including of civilians, journalists, and local activists. The language of “protection” concealed the establishment of violent control.
“The DPR/LPR are the result of a popular uprising; referendums are legitimate.” Russia attempted to create the illusion of spontaneous “people’s statehood,” complete with quasi-parliaments, “ministers,” and pseudo-referendums. This was meant to persuade external audiences that Moscow was merely observing an internal process. In reality, as early as 2014 the UN documented unlawful actions by armed groups that disrupted elections and controlled territories by force rather than by legitimate political procedures. Terms such as “pseudo-republics” and “quasi-state entities” are not rhetorical exaggerations but accurate descriptions of their function: political façades for Russian control and instruments for diffusing responsibility.
Shock Fakes as a Tool of Mobilization
The ATO period became a laboratory for mass production of emotional disinformation. The most notorious example was the story of a “crucified boy” in Sloviansk, broadcast by Russia’s Channel One in July 2014. StopFake and independent investigators demonstrated that the alleged testimony was unverified and unsupported by evidence.
The value of such fakes lay not in plausibility but in impact. They were designed as emotional detonations — to provoke horror, hatred, and a desire for revenge — followed by a flood of contradictory versions to blur the distinction between fact and fabrication. The pattern later seen globally was already in place: first a shock claim, then narrative chaos, and finally the assertion that “the truth will never be known.”
MH17
The downing of flight MH17 in July 2014 marked the moment when Russia’s disinformation apparatus collided with coordinated international criminal investigation and technical expertise. Moscow’s core message followed a familiar formula: simultaneous, mutually exclusive explanations designed to obstruct attribution and responsibility.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) concluded that MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile system transported from Russia to territory controlled by the so-called DPR and returned to Russia after the launch. The JIT traced the system to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk. In 2022, a Dutch court sentenced three defendants to life imprisonment for their role in the downing of MH17 and the murder of 298 people. In 2025, according to Reuters, the ICAO Council also concluded that Russia bore responsibility for the destruction of the aircraft.
MH17 thus became a turning point: the first large-scale, visible demonstration of how modern Russian information cover operates around a military crime.
Additional Narratives
- During the ATO period, several other claims were actively promoted:
- “Ukraine is a puppet of the US/NATO/EU” — denying Ukraine’s agency
- “Foreign mercenaries are fighting in the Ukrainian army; NATO is already at war with Russia” — shifting responsibility to the West
- “Any evidence of Russian crimes is fabricated” — preemptively discrediting investigations
- “Occupied territories are a political reality that must be accepted” — normalizing forced territorial change
- “The Ukrainian army is fighting its own people” — delegitimizing the state’s right to restore control
The ATO is often mistakenly viewed as a different war, separate from the full-scale invasion of 2022. In reality, it was the first major phase of the same Russian-Ukrainian war, built on the same instruments: denial, proxy structures, terror, disinformation, and the attempt to portray aggression as an internal conflict.
During that period, under extremely difficult conditions — a weakened army, shortages of equipment, and post-revolutionary instability — Ukraine held its ground and prevented a rapid collapse scenario. At the same time, Russia refined the model it would later scale up in 2022 without masks: first “we are not there,” then “this is a civil war,” then “we came to protect,” and finally open war accompanied by an ongoing torrent of disinformation.
After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russia’s information machine intensified efforts to discredit Ukraine’s political leadership. One of its key targets was Ukraine’s fifth president, Petro Poroshenko. Pro-Kremlin outlets and affiliated networks systematically pushed disinformation narratives designed to undermine trust inside Ukraine and to damage his image internationally. Among the recurring claims were:
- Poroshenko “killed his own brother”
- Poroshenko is “Jewish”
- Poroshenko “profited from the war”
- Turchynov as the “bloody pastor”
Let’s take them one by one.
The claim that Petro Poroshenko “killed his brother” is a conspiracy narrative that circulated widely after 2014. It was amplified largely by anonymous sources and pro-Russian media as a tool of personal delegitimization, but it has no factual or legal foundation.
Poroshenko’s brother, Mykhailo Poroshenko, died in 1997 in a road traffic accident. Law enforcement recorded the death as the result of an accident. No criminal case for intentional murder was opened, and the involvement of family members was never the subject of an official investigation. Information about the tragedy existed in open biographical sources long before Poroshenko’s presidency and did not attract public doubt for decades.
The “murder” version emerged during the post-Maidan information war as a typical propaganda technique: to portray a political leader as morally corrupt and personally tainted. Such accusations were spread without documents, credible testimony, or verifiable evidence—relying instead on insinuation and emotional manipulation.
It is also telling that Poroshenko named one of his sons Mykhailo. In most social and cultural contexts, naming a child after a deceased relative is an act of remembrance and respect. It is difficult to reconcile that with the logic of the allegation itself.
The claim of Poroshenko’s alleged “Jewish origin” is a textbook example of manipulation in which ethnic identity is artificially weaponized for political discreditation. The family’s biographical background was publicly available long before Poroshenko became president and contained no confirmation of the “sensational revelations” circulated in propaganda form.
In disinformation campaigns, this narrative was used to trigger prejudice and to hint at “external control” or Poroshenko’s supposed “non-Ukrainianness” — a familiar tactic for inflaming xenophobic attitudes.
A common “argument” here leans on a religious-cultural feature of Judaism, where Jewish identity is traditionally traced through the maternal line. Poroshenko’s mother, Yevheniia Poroshenko (née Hrymych), came from an ethnic Ukrainian family with no documented Jewish roots. From the standpoint of genealogy, sociology, and religious tradition, these insinuations are therefore groundless.
The claim that Poroshenko “profited from the war” is also widespread. But in this formulation, such accusations are not supported by court verdicts or documented findings establishing illegal enrichment. As of 2026, there are no publicly known guilty verdicts that would legally confirm personal profiteering from wartime decisions or unlawful benefit derived from the war.
It is worth noting that Poroshenko’s asset declarations were repeatedly subjected to close scrutiny by Ukraine’s anti-corruption ecosystem (including oversight bodies and public monitoring). Despite numerous media scandals and political statements, official inquiries have not produced an evidentiary basis sufficient to convert these allegations into legally substantiated charges of corruption in defense procurement.
The propaganda label “bloody pastor” was systematically promoted by Russian state and pro-Russian media against Oleksandr Turchynov, who served as Acting President of Ukraine in 2014. After Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, Turchynov assumed state responsibilities in accordance with the Constitution—at a moment of profound political crisis and the onset of external aggression. It was during this period that Russia began its operation to occupy Crimea and helped ignite armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. In response, Ukraine launched the Anti-Terrorist Operation against illegal armed formations, exercising its right to self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter.
The manufactured meme “bloody pastor” combined two manipulative elements: emphasis on Turchynov’s Protestant background (he is associated with a Baptist tradition) and a baseless accusation that he “started the war.” The goal was to create the image of a “religious fanatic” responsible for casualties — diverting attention from the true driver of events: Russia’s armed aggression.
International institutions and legal assessments of the 2014 events, however, consistently identify the conflict as the result of external intervention rather than domestic decisions by Ukraine’s leadership. UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 reaffirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and numerous international reports describe Russia as a party to the conflict and an occupying power. In this context, “bloody pastor” functions as a classic example of hate-laden language and a tool of dehumanization—one that has nothing to do with historical or legal reality.
Ukraine’s attainment of ecclesiastical independence was not merely a religious event; it was a shift of security and geopolitical significance. In 2018, the Ecumenical Patriarchate announced its decision to move toward granting autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine, and in January 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) received the Tomos. At the level of church governance, this was a restoration of distinct Ukrainian ecclesiastical subjectivity. At the level of Russian state policy, it was a blow to one of Moscow’s key instruments of influence over Ukraine.
Russia’s reaction was swift and revealing. In 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) severed communion with Constantinople in response to support for Ukrainian autocephaly, framing the decision as “illegal.” Reuters reported at the time that Moscow viewed the development as a strategic defeat on what it called its own “canonical territory.” The language itself immediately shifted the issue beyond theology into the realm of political control and institutional power.
For that reason, the OCU became the object not merely of polemics but of a full-scale hybrid campaign. Ecclesiastical and administrative pressure was combined with international lobbying against recognition of the OCU, information attacks, personal discreditation of hierarchs, and the imposition of propagandistic frames about “schism,” “non-canonicity,” and “persecution of the faithful.” For the Kremlin, this was a matter of principle. Ukrainian church independence undermined a central pillar of the “Russian world” concept — the idea that Ukraine is a “natural” part of a shared Russian civilizational space with a spiritual center in Moscow.
In 2025, the Associated Press noted that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew explicitly linked the ROC’s position to the promotion of the “Russian world” ideology and publicly defended the 2019 decision to recognize an independent Ukrainian church. He effectively calling things by their proper names: this was not merely a “canonical dispute,” but a struggle over political influence carried out under sacred slogans.
For years, the Russian state has used the church not only as a religious institution but as a tool of legitimation, mobilization, and foreign influence. After 2014 — and even more openly after 2022 — the nexus between state, church, and propaganda became increasingly visible. Reuters reported on Patriarch Kirill’s public support for the war and on the practice of prayers “for victory” in the war against Ukraine within the ROC. In a separate fact-check, Reuters also recalled documented cases of Russian clergy blessing military equipment — from missiles to submarines and other weapons systems. This is not a marginal anecdote; it is a mechanism for normalizing war through sacred language, presenting violence as sanctioned, natural, even obligatory.
Within this logic, an independent Ukrainian church represents not just a canonical challenge but a political threat. It demonstrates that Ukraine can exist separately in statehood, culture, and church life alike—thereby dismantling the imperial architecture of subordination that Moscow has long maintained through institutions, symbols, and control over the language used to describe reality.
After the creation of the OCU and the granting of the Tomos, Russian and pro-Russian platforms promoted a recurring set of messages that functioned like interchangeable building blocks. They could be combined, reinforced with “testimony” lacking evidence, attached to any event, and presented as self-evident truths. The central claim was the alleged “non-canonicity” of the OCU and the “illegitimacy” of the Tomos. The goal was not theological debate, but the erosion of the very legitimacy of Ukrainian ecclesiastical subjectivity in the eyes of believers in Ukraine and Orthodox communities abroad.
At the same time, the autocephaly process was conducted through the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which followed its established procedures and in January 2019 formally issued and published the Tomos within its official body of autocephaly documents. This was not a “self-proclamation,” but a structured ecclesiastical process within Orthodox tradition — one that Moscow rejected primarily on political and institutional grounds. In Russia’s information war, the term “non-canonical” functioned as a stigma, shifting the debate from Ukraine’s right to ecclesiastical independence to an emotionally charged rejection of its legitimacy.
Alongside this, another narrative was systematically promoted: that the OCU was a “U.S./Western project” and that autocephaly was a “geopolitical operation” designed to weaken Russia. This framing strips Ukraine of agency, portraying any Ukrainian decision as externally directed. It simultaneously discredits the OCU, diminishes Ukrainian statehood, and encourages international audiences to view Ukraine as lacking independent will. EUvsDisinfo has described such claims as recurring pro-Kremlin templates built on reinforcing formulas — “Ukraine is a puppet,” “Washington stands behind the religious conflict,” “autocephaly is a tool of division.” The deeper issue lies not only in the falsity of these assertions but in their logic: any Ukrainian emancipation is labeled a Western plot in order to deny Ukraine’s agency altogether.
A third line of effort targeted other Orthodox churches and external audiences. Ukrainian autocephaly was presented as an attempt to “split the Orthodox world,” with Constantinople being the source of turmoil. Here the inversion typical of hybrid operations becomes clear: Russia applies ecclesiastical and diplomatic pressure, threatens or executes breaks in communion, yet accuses Ukraine and Constantinople of causing division. EUvsDisinfo documented conspiracy-style claims about a supposed plan to divide the “Russian world” from the “Greek world,” while also noting the absence of evidence and the obvious fact that it was the ROC that severed communion with Constantinople following the move toward Ukrainian autocephaly.
Another enduring narrative, especially amplified later, centered on claims of “persecution of the canonical church” and “oppression of Orthodox believers” in Ukraine. This framing allows the Kremlin to portray Ukraine as a state allegedly “fighting faith,” while masking security concerns — links to Russia, influence networks, propaganda—under the cover of “religious rights.” EUvsDisinfo has identified this as a recurring pro-Kremlin storyline, often supplemented with claims of U.S. direction. In reality, restricting instruments of influence associated with an aggressor state is not equivalent to persecuting religion itself. Conflating the two is one of the most effective manipulations within the church-related narrative.
Alongside these broad political frames operated a more granular but highly effective tactic: reputational smearing. When the existence of the OCU could not be prevented, the campaign shifted to personal attacks — labels such as “self-consecrated,” rumors, insinuations about private life, and unsubstantiated “compromising stories.” These were not random instances of aggressive commentary but deliberate techniques: if you cannot persuade, discredit; if you cannot refute, ridicule; if you cannot halt the process, render it toxic for external observers and psychologically unacceptable for part of the audience.
Another front opened abroad. Moscow sought to block or delay international recognition of the OCU by other Orthodox churches, promote the thesis of a “political adventure,” and undermine trust in Constantinople by portraying it as a Western instrument. Even when much of this activity unfolded behind closed doors, its contours are visible in public reactions, breaks in communion, threats of rupture, and repeated accusations of “non-canonicity” and “schism.” Reuters documented the ROC’s break with Constantinople during the preparatory phase and the granting of autocephaly, while the Associated Press later emphasized that the dispute over recognition of an independent Ukrainian church became a lasting element of a broader church-political confrontation.
The story of the OCU reveals the depth of the Russia–Ukraine confrontation. This existential struggle is fought not only with tanks, missiles, and soldiers at the front. It is fought over Ukraine’s right to its own history, its own institutions, its own language of self-description, and its own spiritual space. For the Kremlin, an independent Ukrainian church is dangerous for the same reason as an independent Ukrainian state: it dismantles the imperial construct in which Ukraine must remain a “younger brother,” a “part of historical Russia,” or a territory within Moscow’s “canonical influence.”
That is why Russian attacks on the OCU have been hybrid in their very formula: outwardly religious in part, substantively political, and strategically imperial in purpose.
Ukraine’s 2019 presidential elections became a test of democratic resilience in wartime. The process remained competitive and, overall, respected fundamental freedoms — despite structural challenges and an aggressive information environment. For Russia, therefore, the logic of interference was not centered on installing a preferred candidate. It was far more pragmatic: to ensure that any outcome appeared questionable, and that any winner entered office with a deficit of legitimacy even before inauguration. For the Kremlin, the real victory was not a particular name on the ballot, but an atmosphere in which society distrusts the procedure, political camps refuse to recognize one another, and the state is perceived as weak and ungovernable.
At the security level, Ukraine publicly documented signs of attempted influence. In February 2019, Reuters reported that Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) accused Russia of creating illegal structures, bribing actors, and building influence networks targeting both voting and public opinion. Parallel analyses of foreign interference described how Kremlin propaganda sought to pre-program perceptions of the elections as “rigged,” and Ukraine as a “failed state” allegedly controlled by “fascists” or “neo-Nazis.” The target was not a specific candidate, but the very idea of elections as a mechanism for renewing power. If the procedure is declared fraudulent in advance, any result becomes grounds for delegitimization.
The core Russian frame was simple and universal: “they cannot have fair elections.” In 2019, this operated through several mutually reinforcing sub-frames. First, suspicion that the vote was “pre-drawn” was injected before results were announced, ensuring distrust existed regardless of actual procedures. Second, the narrative of “external governance” was constantly recycled — portraying Ukraine as incapable of sovereign decision-making, and therefore rendering elections mere decoration. Third, the longstanding propaganda axis branding Ukraine as “fascist” or “Nazi” was sustained, simultaneously justifying aggression and undermining the very notion of Ukrainian democracy. Notably, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s victory — given his Jewish background — directly contradicted this construct, something analysts tracking Russian propaganda explicitly observed. When reality does not fit the template, the Kremlin does not abandon the template; it adapts tactics to preserve it.
Against Petro Poroshenko, Russia’s campaign operated as an attack on the symbol of post-Maidan statehood, European and NATO integration, and Ukraine’s resistance between 2014 and 2019. Three interconnected strikes were used. First, to attribute to him a motive of “war for power and profit,” shifting responsibility from the aggressor to Ukraine’s leadership and demoralizing society. Second, to construct an “anti-hero” image — someone who allegedly drove the country into ruin, where “everything is bad” is presented not as political critique but as emotional branding. Third, to erode his agency through the “Western puppet” narrative, undermining the perception of his decisions as genuinely Ukrainian. StopFake’s research into campaign-period narratives documented recurring storylines such as “failed government,” “total poverty,” and “war is a profitable business,” which were systematically personalized around Poroshenko in pro-Russian media spaces. The cumulative effect was to suggest that the problem was not Russian aggression, but the alleged self-interest of Ukraine’s elite.
Against Zelenskyy, the Kremlin simultaneously tested two opposing but equally corrosive lines: portraying him either as “dangerous” or as “incompetent,” thereby casting doubt on his capacity to govern regardless of outcome. On one side, he was trivialized as a “clown” and an accidental figure, reinforcing the idea that the country had “voted for a show” and was therefore incapable of mature political choice. On the other, the universal “puppet” construct was applied — whether of oligarchic interests or foreign centers of power — because this frame does not depend on programs, policies, or facts. In parallel, a toxic narrative suggested he was a “Russian agent” who would “surrender the country.” Its strength lay not in evidence, but in polarization: selling fear of betrayal to one part of society, and contempt for the so-called “party of war” to another. The result is that a newly elected president begins his term amid distrust even before taking substantive action.
Russia’s most effective move in 2019 was to attack both candidates simultaneously with the formula “both are bad.” EUvsDisinfo documented typical pro-Kremlin claims that Poroshenko and Zelenskyy alike were “puppets of Western imperialism” and “enemies of the Ukrainian people.” This neutralizes the meaning of choice itself. If “everyone is the same,” democracy becomes a façade, and society becomes apathetic and easier to destabilize. Practically, this framing does more than damage reputations: it strikes at institutions, reduces trust in state procedures, fractures electoral groups to the point where they cease recognizing the winner’s legitimacy, and creates fertile ground for further destabilization —regardless of the voting outcome.
In 2019, Russia was playing a long game. Poroshenko was targeted as a symbol of post-Maidan resistance; Zelenskyy was either diminished as an accident or poisoned as a controllable figure. Overarching both was the umbrella narrative: “elections do not matter,” because Ukraine is supposedly “illegitimate,” “externally governed,” and “incapable of democracy.” This strategy explains why it is crucial for the Kremlin that any transfer of power in Ukraine appear not as evidence of vibrant political competition, but as grounds for doubt, disillusionment, and internal conflict—in other words, as a tool for weakening the state without firing a shot.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy entered office in 2019 as a “peace candidate,” with the expectation that the war could be reduced through de-escalation, prisoner exchanges, negotiations, and a demonstrated willingness to compromise on humanitarian issues. In the first months of this approach, forces disengaged in Stanytsia Luhanska, followed by efforts to advance disengagement in Zolote and Petrivske as a condition for moving the political track forward. The Ukrainian side linked these steps to the release of detainees and progress in negotiations. The underlying assumption was that the war still contained a political “valve” that could be opened without sacrificing statehood.
At the same time, a less visible reality unfolded beneath the public discourse. Ukraine continued to strengthen deterrence tools, understanding that de-escalation does not equal guaranteed peace. One symbol of this duality was the development and adoption of the Neptune missile system. Fielding such capabilities signaled that the state was simultaneously preparing for a worst-case scenario. Pacifism in a country at war always has a shadow side: deterrence, preparation, reserves.
The fundamental problem was that the Kremlin did not treat negotiations as a path to peace. It treated them as a way to buy time, blur responsibility, and keep Ukraine in a state of fatigue. That is why the “era of pacifism” did not end with a diplomatic breakthrough, but with Russia’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion. After February 24, 2022, Zelenskyy transformed in a matter of days from a president seeking to prevent war into the face of wartime leadership. He absorbed the initial blow and endured it alongside Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Defense Forces, and Ukrainian society.
When the formula “Kyiv in three days” failed, Russia did not abandon its objective — but it was forced to change its narrative. The first response was denial and self-reassurance: “everything is going according to plan,” and reports of a failed blitzkrieg were dismissed as disinformation. This was followed by repackaging defeat as a “transition to the next phase”: the withdrawal from northern Ukraine was described as “regrouping,” with the Donbas declared the main priority. It was an attempt to conceal humiliation by reframing retreat as deliberate strategy.
When even the attempt to seize Kyiv became too politically costly to defend, a third version emerged: “We never intended to storm the capital.” This narrative was aimed less at external audiences than at domestic stability. If there was no plan, there was no failure. In parallel, Moscow amplified another explanation: if Ukraine had held out, it was because “NATO is fighting Russia through Ukrainian hands.” This framing rationalized setbacks, mounting casualties, and the need for a prolonged war.
A separate information front focused on shielding Russian war crimes from accountability. After the withdrawal from northern Ukraine, the claim that “Bucha was staged” was aggressively promoted, and any evidence labeled a “provocation to derail negotiations.” In the same pattern came persistent efforts to shift responsibility for civilian deaths onto Ukraine: Russia “does not strike civilians,” while Ukrainian authorities allegedly “provoke attacks,” “hide equipment among residential buildings,” or “use people as shields.” These were not isolated fakes but parts of a single structure — designed to justify the war itself and to blame the victim for its own suffering.
In the end, the failure of “Kyiv in three days” did not trigger reassessment in Moscow but a conveyor belt of rationalizations. First, “everything is on plan.” Then, “regrouping for Donbas.” Then, “we never intended to take Kyiv.” Then, “this is NATO’s war.” Against this backdrop, Zelenskyy became not merely a president at war, but a symbol of a state that did not collapse when, according to the Kremlin’s expectations, it was supposed to fall. In that sense, the era of pacifism and the era of war converged in a single political figure.
On 24 February 2022, Russia crossed a threshold beyond which neither “hybridity,” nor half-denial, nor diplomatic euphemisms could function. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked an open rupture of the foundational post-1945 norm: the prohibition of aggression as an instrument of policy. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine explicitly qualified Russia’s use of armed force against Ukraine as an act of aggression within the meaning of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 14 December 1974.
In practical terms, Europe was thrust back into a logic long thought impossible: territorial seizure by force, terror against civilians as a method of warfare rather than its “side effect,” and the parallel rewriting of reality through propaganda. From the outset, Russia attempted to package the war as a limited “special operation.” Events on the ground quickly stripped away that mask. This was not a targeted operation but a broad campaign of occupation, filtration, deportation, and the destruction of civilian life.
That day also initiated the darkest dimension of the war: systematic violence against civilians. Within the first weeks of the occupation of northern Ukraine, international missions began documenting killings, including indications of extrajudicial executions and targeted attacks on individual civilians. The UN’s thematic report covering Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions (from 24 February to early April 2022) describes such cases and explicitly notes “strong indications” that some documented executions may constitute the war crime of willful killing.
Bucha became a symbol not because it was unique, but because it became visible. The UN documented dozens of civilian killings in Bucha during the occupation. The case cemented a new clarity: Russian occupation is not “administrative control,” but a violent regime marked by repression and death.
Alongside killings emerged another marker of civilizational rupture — sexual violence as a weapon of war. The UN Commission documented cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, including as methods of torture, in the context of Russian occupation and detention. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in its periodic reports, described sexualized torture and abuse in places of detention as part of broader patterns of cruel treatment.
“Burial” became another language of this war — sometimes literally. In liberated Izium in autumn 2022, a mass grave was uncovered. Reuters reported a burial site containing more than 440 bodies. This was not merely a statistic, but evidence of how occupation transforms civilian space into a space of death, where normal state procedures are replaced by improvised cemeteries and fear.
Mariupol demonstrated another form of the same reality: a city cut off and devastated, forced to bury its dead locally because ordinary life was impossible under bombardment and siege. According to Associated Press estimates based on satellite imagery, at least 10,300 new graves appeared in and around Mariupol over the course of 2022. As of February 2026, 12,500 deaths have been verified, while the total number is certainly higher—a scale of tragedy difficult to grasp in human terms.
In parallel, Russia consolidated the second front of the war: the informational one. Denial of the obvious ceased to be a reaction and became a tactic. Documented crimes are declared “staged,” mutually contradictory versions are launched simultaneously, and audiences are being imposed by fatigue from facts. For that reason, 24 February 2022 marks not only the start of full-scale hostilities, but the normalization of a new doctrine: everything can be done while insisting that “nothing happened.”
The international order did not fracture because law ceased to exist. It fractured because Russia demonstrated a willingness to operate outside it and to test the limits of impunity. The global response became part of this new landscape: investigations, documentation, judicial tracks. Notably, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children — formal legal recognition that this war consists not only of battles, but of the deliberate destruction of a society.
24 February 2022 is the point at which the war ceased to be a “peripheral conflict” and became a stress test for the credibility of the postwar security architecture. Mass killings, rape, graves in forest belts and private yards—these are not “excesses,” but indicators that the rupture occurred at the level of norms, not merely along the front line. The question of the “final fracture of the international order” is therefore not rhetorical. It is diagnostic. Either order will be restored through the force of law and the capacity to defend it — or it will become a façade.
In 2023, Russia’s information machine ceased to function merely as a “companion to war” and evolved into a fully institutionalized industry — systematically funded, strategically planned, and scaled by the state. Government expenditures on “mass media” and its affiliated ecosystem reached tens of billions of rubles at the level of major state holdings, while parallel programs were launched to support so-called “patriotic content” online. Assessments by Debunk.org documented substantial state financing of media in 2023, including significant subsidies to VGTRK and RT.
By that point, propaganda had become a continuous state service. It manufactured meaning for the war, deflected responsibility for crimes, fueled hatred, and simultaneously targeted external audiences — especially within the EU. References to “millions spent on propagandists and channels” were no longer metaphorical. Russia officially maintains institutions that produce “national content” with state funding across formats ranging from TV series and blogs to Telegram networks and coordinated campaigns. Reporting on the Internet Development Institute (IRI) described tens of billions of rubles allocated for “patriotic” content, with IRI competitions in 2023 distributing multi-billion-ruble budgets.
Telegram, Clone Media, PSYOPS, and Elections
In 2023, Russia’s model of information attacks against the EU became more technological and less television-centric. Whereas RT had once served as the flagship outlet, the focus shifted to digital ecosystems: cloned news sites, page networks, paid content seeding, Telegram chains, and pseudo-analysis disguised as “local reporting.”
France’s warning about a network identified by Viginum as “Portal Kombat” is revealing precisely because its activity was traced between September and December 2023. The network operated through websites and social media—including Telegram — to undermine support for Ukraine and European unity.
Operations such as Doppelgänger also intensified. Their mechanics rely on mimicking legitimate sources and saturating platforms with coordinated content. A campaign involving fabricated “celebrity quotes” carrying anti-Ukrainian messaging, reported by Wired, escalated in late 2023 and targeted audiences in France and Germany through paid ads and network dissemination.
Other 2023 operations involved interference in electoral processes through disinformation and emotional manipulation. Ahead of the January 2023 Czech presidential election, targeted chain emails warned voters of “war,” mobilization, and “sending Czechs to fight in Ukraine” — a classic fear-based tactic.
In Slovakia’s 2023 parliamentary elections, a widely discussed deepfake audio surfaced in the final days before voting, illustrating how AI and distribution networks can be deployed to erode trust in politicians and media at decisive moments.
The goal of such operations is not necessarily to “install a preferred candidate.” Often, it is to erode trust so thoroughly that any outcome appears dubious and EU societies grow accustomed to the idea that “nothing can be proven anyway.”
2023 Inside Russia: The Normalization of Cruelty
In 2023, Russian television and the official media mainstream completed a rhetorical transition: cruelty was no longer concealed but presented as justified — even moral. Human rights and analytical organizations increasingly documented patterns of violence and hate speech as elements of state policy rather than isolated “excesses.” A July 2023 report by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre described systemic violence and highlighted the role of public rhetoric and state mechanisms in cultivating an environment of impunity.
Cynicism extended beyond talk shows into official communication logic. Strikes on civilian infrastructure were consistently described as attacks on “military targets.” Deportations of children were reframed as “rescue.” Torture was labeled “screening.” Mass graves were dismissed as “staged.” By 2023, this system functioned as an alibi conveyor belt: for every documented fact, an “alternative version” — preferably multiple mutually contradictory ones — was immediately produced, exhausting audiences and normalizing the belief that truth is unattainable.
Another defining feature of 2023 was the “Telegramization” of war. Telegram became both a factory for moral narratives and a shield for war crimes. In January 2023, Detector Media documented how Russian and occupation-linked Telegram channels systematically prepared justifications for the deportation of Ukrainian children and other crimes using emotional frames such as “revenge” and “rescue.” Year-end reviews showed how the “Kremlegam” ecosystem sought to polarize Ukrainian society and undermine trust in state institutions through recurring themes and provocations.
In short, 2023 offered ideal conditions for Russian propaganda: prolonged war, audience fatigue, algorithmic platforms, inexpensive content production tools, emerging deepfake formats — and, crucially, state money and infrastructure financing “correct meanings.” Domestically, this meant the normalization of cruelty as the language of the state. Externally, it meant scalable psychological and informational operations targeting the EU — aimed at trust, elections, and unity.
AI and FIMI: The Modernization of Propaganda Tools
After 2022, Russian propaganda ceased to be merely a factory of “correct narratives.” It evolved into an infrastructure of influence: planning campaigns, identifying vulnerabilities, testing messages, scaling distribution, and layering operations with interchangeable “versions.”
Two key innovations define this phase: the transition to the FIMI framework and the mass adoption of artificial intelligence.
Within the EU, Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) is defined as a largely non-illegal pattern of behavior that threatens or negatively affects values, procedures, and political processes. It is manipulative, intentional, coordinated, and may involve both state and non-state actors, including proxies. This differs from traditional “disinformation.” FIMI focuses not on whether a statement is false, but on behavior and intent. An operation may rely on real facts — selectively edited and framed to provoke polarization, distrust, or paralysis. Under this approach, the decisive factor is coordinated manipulation, not merely factual inaccuracy.
Practically, this shifts the objective from “convincing” to “corroding.” The aim is not to impose a single worldview, but to erode belief in the possibility of truth itself. Elections, courts, armed forces, and alliances become targets not of debate but of institutional erosion. The core asset is no longer a television channel, but infrastructure: domains, clone sites, disposable accounts, advertising networks, Telegram chains, and cyber-financial tools. Accordingly, EEAS reporting increasingly emphasizes operational architecture and digital infrastructure alongside narrative analysis.
A concrete illustration is Doppelgänger-style operations during the 2024 European Parliament elections. These involve dual components: producing and packaging content through newly created domains mimicking legitimate media, and amplifying it via coordinated networks of inauthentic accounts on platforms such as X and Facebook.
Artificial intelligence did not invent propaganda — but it made it cheaper, faster, scalable, and more personalized. Where once editorial teams and studios were required, template pipelines, synthetic voices, and generated personas now suffice. European analytical reports warn of rising deepfakes and highly realistic deceptive media in political contexts, noting that generative tools lower entry barriers and increase attack frequency.
In practice, Russian use of AI tends to operate in several modes. Firstly, as a short-cycle weaponization: a deepfake video or audio of a recognizable figure is released at peak political sensitivity, when verification lags behind emotional reaction. Secondly, as a localization tool: generative models create pseudo-authors, pseudo-witnesses, “local” pages, and synthetic community voices functioning as proxy infrastructure. Thirdly, as a narrative recoding conveyor: a single narrative can be fragmented into memes, short videos, pseudo-analysis, Telegram posts, coordinated comment waves, and leaks — distributed to appear organic. And finally, as a noise generation machine: when facts are inconvenient, the goal is not refutation but drowning reality in competing versions until fatigue sets in.
Publicly described operations in Moldova illustrate AI-amplified disinformation waves combining synthetic “news” outlets, coordinated account networks, and Telegram-based organization. Reports of deepfake campaigns and staged “witnesses” in European contexts further suggest that such technologies are becoming standard tools.
AI integrates into FIMI as an accelerator at every stage: monitoring social fractures algorithmically, rapidly prototyping narrative variants for segmented audiences, deploying domain infrastructures and account farms, measuring reactions, adjusting messaging, and launching successive waves with increasing precision. This is why FIMI is described as a networked threat rather than a collection of fakes — and why European responses increasingly rely on resilience toolkits encompassing situational awareness, regulatory measures, and foreign policy instruments alongside fact-checking.
Fact-checking remains necessary — but no longer sufficient. Within the FIMI logic, the critical task is distinguishing between a “mistake” and an “operation.” Key diagnostic questions include: Who benefits from this narrative at this moment? Are there signs of coordination — simultaneous launches, identical accounts, translation packages, unnatural ad amplification? Is there visible infrastructure — clone sites, domain twins, editorial voids, forged branding? Are there markers of synthetic production — unnatural voice tone, video artifacts, abrupt edits, lack of original files or verifiable sources?
Most importantly, response must include anticipation, not just debunking. When societies understand manipulation mechanics before exposure, its impact diminishes. This is why European resilience documents increasingly emphasize prebunking — prevention rather than post-factum correction.
By 2024–2025, support for Ukraine in Europe increasingly resembled a ledger of risks, costs, and domestic political trade-offs rather than an emotional mobilization. “Fatigue” did not necessarily mean abandonment. More often, it meant a shift in tone and framing: less solidarity as a moral imperative, more bargaining over conditions, deadlines, compensation, and the pragmatic question, “What do we get in return?” In this environment, populists regrouped at home, while EU mechanisms — built on consensus and veto power—proved slow for a war unfolding in real time.
Polling data confirm this picture without dramatization. Between 2022 and 2024, public support for aiding Ukraine across the EU generally declined, yet remained relatively high. This is the portrait of “fatigue without capitulation”: support persists, but it is no longer unconditional and is far more sensitive to inflation, energy insecurity, migration pressures, and information campaigns.
Robert Fico did not “emerge” in 2024 — he returned to power in autumn 2023. From the outset, his line was formalized in concrete decisions. Reuters reported that on 8 November 2023 the new Slovak government rejected a military aid package prepared by its predecessors. Public statements and policy positions reinforced a halt to state military assistance, skepticism toward sanctions, and a rhetoric of “peace” as a substitute for deterrence.
By 2025, this position hardened further regarding financing. In October 2025, Reuters quoted Fico stating that Slovakia would not participate in any EU scheme helping Ukraine cover military expenditures. In December 2025, in Brussels, he reiterated his refusal to finance Ukraine’s military needs through loans or national resources.
In the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš in 2025 did what populists often do best: transform fatigue and social anxiety into an electoral majority. Reuters reported that ANO won the October 2025 parliamentary elections and that President Petr Pavel appointed Babiš prime minister on 9 December 2025. Coverage also noted his tilt toward Europe’s far-right ecosystem and intentions to scale back support for Ukraine, including in the context of the Czech ammunition procurement initiative.
Taken together, Fico and Babiš illustrate the same logic: the war becomes a tool of domestic politics. Not because voters are “pro-Russian,” but because a segment of the electorate is tired, irritated, and anxious about prices and crises — and is offered a simple formula: “Stop spending on others; start spending on ourselves.”
The EU, at war indirectly, runs into its own institutional design. Key decisions require unanimity or near-consensus, enabling individual capitals to delay or leverage veto power. A telling example was the €50 billion Ukraine Facility agreed in February 2024. Before the 1 February summit, the package stalled over Budapest’s position. Reuters described how other leaders effectively “isolated” Viktor Orbán to overcome the blockage.
At the same time, a deficit of long-term commitments became visible. Even where political will exists, multi-year funds, major joint instruments, and systemic defense programs encounter institutional and national constraints. In January 2026, CEPA underscored European partners’ reluctance to undertake large multi-year commitments and noted that efforts to mobilize substantial new military assistance at the EU level in early 2025 faltered due to insufficient member-state backing.
Even when decisions are made, production and logistical inertia render assistance uneven, while new allocations remain volatile. By late 2025, the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker recorded a drop in new European military aid commitments to their lowest levels since the start of the full-scale war. This fuels what in Ukraine is perceived as “perpetually slow Europe,” while in Europe it feeds the temptation to respond, “We have already done a lot.” That asymmetry easily turns into mutual resentment.
The message “Ukraine is ungrateful” is not a neutral assessment — it is a framing device that functions like a toxin. It shifts the war from a matter of security to one of grievance, distorts causal logic, and creates moral comfort for reducing assistance. EUvsDisinfo has documented this narrative as a recurring pro-Kremlin instrument aimed at European audiences, using “ingratitude” as an emotional hook for division and delegitimization of support.
On national platforms, this framing is particularly potent where it intersects with social tensions. In Poland, for example, research on political discourse around Ukrainian migrants and refugees describes the promotion of images of “cynical and ungrateful Ukrainian elites” alongside claims that society is allegedly “losing prosperity” by helping Ukrainians.
The core function of this narrative is not to describe Ukraine’s behavior. It is to alter the emotional geometry of support. Instead of “we support those holding the line,” the frame becomes “we support someone who must express gratitude in the correct tone.” Security policy is thus replaced by politics of resentment.
While Ukraine buys time for the continent’s rearmament, perhaps the more relevant question is when Europe will thank Ukraine? Missiles matter — but time is priceless.
If Europe truly considers Ukraine part of its own security architecture, “gratitude” cannot be confined to speeches and flags. It is measured in the speed and scale of decisions, the ability to bypass internal spoilers, and the willingness to invest in defense before crisis rather than after it. It is also measured in intellectual honesty: Ukraine is not asking for charity; Ukraine is buying time for Europe at the cost of its cities, its people, and its front line.
The reflex that “Ukraine is ungrateful” is pragmatically flawed. In war, gratitude is not political currency. The currency of war is time, ammunition, production capacity, and decisions. If Europe wishes to avoid a scenario in which Russia tests NATO and the EU directly, the relevant question is not whether Ukraine expresses sufficient thanks — but whether Europe acts quickly enough.
Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 changed the tempo of diplomacy. Washington began pushing a “quick deal” format, while the White House’s rhetoric repeatedly swung between optimism and the threat to “walk away” if there was no breakthrough. Against this backdrop, the Kremlin responded not with concessions, but by shifting the war into a negotiation game in which the key commodity is time: the American side wants results faster than the front line allows, and Moscow tries to trade pauses and promises without changing the substance of its demands.
Russia’s 2025 tactic rests on a simple formula: publicly “for peace,” but only a peace that legally locks in what has been seized and turns Ukrainian statehood into a constrained, limited construct. In February, the Kremlin signaled “readiness for talks,” but immediately tied them to “realities on the ground” — that is, a reward for aggression. From there the logic only hardened: Moscow repeatedly treated territory not as a subject for bargaining but as a precondition, and in parallel returned to the mantra of “eliminating root causes” — a package of demands about neutrality, restrictions on defense, and a revision of Ukraine’s core security choices.
That is why the negotiation track looked like sabotage even when it formally continued. When one side enters a process demanding that the other first accept the outcomes of occupation, negotiations stop being a mechanism for peace and become a mechanism for capitulation. A UK parliamentary review of talks from April to June 2025 noted the absence of a breakthrough on key issues and described a process narrowing to technical contacts, memoranda, and limited arrangements — without any change in Russia’s position.
In 2025, statements about “progress,” “contacts,” “memoranda,” and “we’re almost there” coexisted with the unchanged essence of Russia’s demands — and at times with their escalation. Moscow was skilled at selling the world an image of process to lower the perceived price of war for external audiences while maintaining pressure on the battlefield. The rhetoric around Trump’s “peace efforts” was also used as a shield: any Ukrainian actions, or any refusal to accept ultimatums, were framed as “undermining peace” and “provocations,” while responsibility for failure was pushed onto Kyiv and European capitals.
A separate tool in this technology was micro-deals that could be marketed as “de-escalation” but were not an end to the war. The phone call between Trump and Putin on 18 March 2025 produced a limited outcome — such as a temporary pause on strikes against energy infrastructure — without delivering a full ceasefire. That is why attempts to sell it as a “second Yalta” functioned less as analysis and more as expectation management. For the Kremlin, such partial pauses are convenient: they create the impression of movement, reduce pressure, buy time, and leave the strategic objective intact — after which any collapse can easily be explained as “Ukraine’s fault” or “Europe’s incitement.”
A notable feature of 2025 was the “packaging” of Russian ultimatums as a “rational compromise” through business channels and informal envoys. One visible figure in this line was Kirill Dmitriev. Reuters described how a U.S. “28-point plan” was shaped using a Russian non-paper delivered in autumn, and how expanding the plan’s framework was discussed through contacts in which Dmitriev appeared alongside U.S. representatives. In parallel, American envoys publicly described the contacts as “productive,” but the central uncertainty remained unchanged: would Russia accept any formula that does not guarantee the outcome it wants? Moscow thus kept “playing negotiations” right up to the point where real steps back would be required — and then stopped.
Another part of the picture is Russia’s dual-track approach to Trump himself. It can flatter him publicly while simultaneously advancing narratives that undermine his position, split allies, and devalue the U.S. role as a stabilizer. In 2025, this operated in at least three modes. First, through the “second Yalta” storyline, which hits allies’ trust by depicting Trump as complicit in a “division of Europe.” Second, through portraying Trump as naïve or a weak negotiator who is being “played”—a frame that supports the external message “America is unpredictable” and the internal Russian message “the Kremlin talks to Washington from a position of superiority, without concessions.” Third, through systematically feeding polarization in the United States regardless of personalities—attacking trust in democratic procedures and the electoral system itself, where mutually contradictory narratives can coexist because their shared outcome is distrust and conflict.
In the end, the “Trump era” in 2025 became for the Kremlin a chance to relaunch a diplomatic façade without changing strategic aims. Russia did everything it could to avoid sitting down at the negotiating table in the real sense of the word. Where it would have to give up occupied territory and acknowledge Ukraine’s right to security, Moscow chose imitation — imitation of process and imitation of “ceasefire.” That bought time, fractured alliances, and shifted the debate away from aggression toward a different question: “why won’t you agree?”
Russia is not abandoning its plans to seize the Donbas. After the occupation of Pokrovsk, it will likely continue to declare a “final stage of liberating the DPR.” Yet even if Moscow achieves tactical advances, there is little reason to expect strategic closure of the campaign. Donbas will continue to function as a political symbol — one that justifies mobilization of resources but does not guarantee a decisive outcome.
Another likely direction is Zaporizhzhia. Despite concentrated efforts, 2026 is unlikely to bring Russia a breakthrough in the south, even if it maintains the stated objective of reaching and occupying the city of Zaporizhzhia. The current defensive configuration, reinforced by recent counteroffensive and stabilization actions by Ukraine’s Defense Forces, makes large-scale offensive operations prohibitively costly for the forces Russia presently fields. The most probable scenario is continued positional warfare with high casualty rates driven by Russia’s “infiltration” tactics — without a strategic rupture of the front.
In 2026, the gap between statements from the Russian leadership and the actual battlefield situation is likely to widen further. Kupiansk remains a telling example. During the winter of 2025–2026, Russian offensive attempts led to encirclement and significant losses among Russian units, yet Moscow continues to claim control or “operational presence.” In cases of military setbacks, the informational component will carry even greater weight: declarations of control, “successful operations,” and partial achievements will serve as tools to sustain domestic stability inside Russia.
The completion of Russia’s mobilization infrastructure means that 2026 will unfold under the sign of readiness to scale the conflict. Even without an immediate announcement of a new mobilization wave, Russia will retain the capacity for rapid force expansion. This complicates any scenario of swift settlement and opens further avenues for escalation. It remains unclear where additional forces generated through mobilization could be deployed — whether in Ukraine or potentially along a new front in Europe.
Initiatives to streamline military logistics and defense coordination within the EU — the so-called Military Schengen Zone — indicate that 2026 will also be a year of institutional adaptation to a prolonged threat. Support for Ukraine is increasingly embedded within a broader system of collective security rather than treated as an exceptional policy.
Taken together, military, informational, and political dynamics suggest that 2026 will not be a year of war’s end. The most likely scenario is the continuation of hostilities at varying intensities, with possible escalation. The war is entering a structural phase, where endurance, resources, and strategic adaptability become decisive.
Europe is already shifting toward a defense-oriented logic, but this process must accelerate to prevent Russia from being tempted to test NATO and the EU’s resolve through another so-called “little victorious war.” And the accompanying information offensive would not even need to be invented — after all, “Faut-il mourir pour Dantzig?”
The only way to prevent war is to be prepared for it.