Russian Disinformation Is No Longer Propaganda — It Is Hybrid Warfare, Polish Researchers Find

A study conducted across Eastern Europe concludes that Russia’s information operations have become indistinguishable from military strategy and that societies are dangerously underprepared.

Russian disinformation campaigns are not designed to persuade. They are designed to break. That is the central finding of research conducted by scientists from the Institute of Political Sciences at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, published this week by Science in Poland.

“The goal is to destroy public trust in states and institutions,” said Wojciech Kotowicz, who led the project. The research was based on field visits to Chisinau and Tbilisi, where experts confirmed that information operations are now routinely used to destabilise public sentiment before key votes, mask military actions, and exert psychological pressure on civilians. “In the information sphere, the line between peacetime and wartime has practically ceased to exist,” Kotowicz said.

A Playbook Tested in Georgia and Moldova

The researchers found that Russia does not deploy a single unified narrative but adapts its messaging to local conditions. Georgia’s controversial “foreign agents” law served as a case study. Pro-Russian media and politicians framed it as a necessary defence of sovereignty against Western interference, mixing real examples of foreign influence with fabricated claims to produce a credible narrative.

At the same time, the same disinformation network worked to discredit mass protests against the law, using deepfakes and fabricated evidence to portray demonstrators as paid agents of the West. Social media campaigns spread false reports of arrests to intimidate potential protesters. Cyberattacks on government institutions and independent media were later repackaged in disinformation as proof of the instability caused by pro-European policies.

In Moldova, the approach was different but equally calculated. Rather than a single centralised campaign, Russian actors used narratives tailored to specific ethnic and linguistic communities, while local influencers, often unaware they were doing so, amplified pro-Kremlin messages to their audiences. As Insight News Media has documented in detail, this pattern of coordinated narrative manipulation has been a consistent feature of Russian interference in Moldova’s electoral cycles.

Beyond Fact-Checking

What makes these campaigns particularly difficult to counter, Kotowicz argues, is that they are not a series of isolated incidents. In both Moldova and Georgia, the researchers found evidence of long-term, systematic efforts to build pro-Russian influence networks, funding local media and organisations, supporting specific politicians and parties, and embedding disinformation within a broader strategy that also encompasses economic and political pressure.

“The days when Russian propaganda was easily recognisable due to its primitiveness and obvious bias are over,” Kotowicz said. Modern campaigns use advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence, and a profound understanding of local cultural contexts to make their messaging harder to detect and easier to spread.

The researchers also identified a structural vulnerability that no amount of fact-checking alone can rectify “Public resistance to these actions is alarmingly low in regions with poor access to independent media,” Kotowicz said. The conclusion of the study is direct: effective countermeasures must be long-term, strategic, and multidimensional, built around media education and the strengthening of civil society, not just the debunking of individual falsehoods.