Analysis
Information Sovereignty
Are Civil Society Organisations the Canary in the Digital Coal Mine?
13 September 2024
1 December 2023
Russia’s propaganda machine went into overdrive in 2023, targeting the countries of the Visegrad Four, where the initial broad support for Ukraine’s war effort and its European aspirations hit turbulence ahead of an EU decision in December to open accession negotiations with Kyiv.
The impact of Russian propaganda has been most visible in Hungary and Slovakia, but it has also made inroads in Poland and the Czech Republic. And there are growing concerns over Russian covert influence in the escalating protest of Polish truck drivers and farmers blocking the border crossings with Ukraine.
Russia-inspired publications and covert influence
A recent study presented by Myroslava Markova, a senior analyst at the fact-checking platform VoxCheck, revealed that 8,296 instances of Russian propaganda were identified in the media of six European countries between February and October 2023.