Behind every statistic about disinformation, there is a human story, and the one that emerged most powerfully across borders this autumn was a story of suffering turned into a weapon. The image of a Ukrainian mother holding her child, an elderly person sheltering in a basement, a family fleeing from a shelled village—these are not just news images. They are raw, emotional realities that should unite decent people everywhere in compassion. But instead of compassion, the manipulators who work against Ukraine saw opportunity. They took those images and twisted them, pouring a steady stream of false and misleading claims into the digital bloodstream of Europe. Ukrainian authorities were framed as callous and cruel, supposedly abandoning vulnerable families, forcing women into military service against their will, or recklessly endangering their own civilians. None of this matched the observable truth, but that hardly mattered. The goal was not to inform, but to corrode. The goal was to make ordinary people in democratic countries doubt the moral basis of their own support for Kyiv. If Ukrainians are somehow unworthy or their leaders are monsters, the logic goes, then why should we care? Why should our governments send money, arms, and energy into a hopeless cause? That is the emotional trap being set, and it is a dangerous one, because it exploits the very human instinct to protect the innocent. By muddying who the innocent are, the manipulators hope to exhaust our empathy, blur our moral clarity, and eventually persuade us to look away from a war that is not just a distant tragedy, but a test of whether democratic societies can still recognize evil when they see it.
The assault on empathy did not stop at Ukraine’s borders. It reached directly into the daily fears and frustrations of European citizens, with a second major theme: framing solidarity with Ukraine as a betrayal of one’s own people. In this narrative, supporting Kyiv is not a noble act of defending international law; it is a reckless luxury that hurts ordinary families. Sanctions against Russia are depicted as the cause of skyrocketing energy bills and empty grocery shelves. Ukrainian refugees are painted as a burden, a threat to housing, schools, and public services. Even governments’ ability to respond to natural disasters is dragged into the story, with cynical claims that money sent to Ukraine somehow leaves Europe vulnerable to floods, fires, and storms. This messaging is brilliantly designed for human weakness, because it does not ask anyone to love Russia. It simply asks them to resent the costs of helping someone else. It feeds on exhaustion, on the quiet thought that we have our own problems, on the fear that we might be left behind. And it works best in times of economic stress, when people are already anxious about their mortgages, their children’s future, and their own safety. In that atmosphere, a simple, angry message can feel more true than a complicated official explanation. The manipulation does not need to create a lie from scratch every time; it just needs to attach itself to a genuine hardship and whisper, “Your leaders did this to you. They care more about Ukraine than about you.” That whisper, repeated across languages and platforms, slowly turns a generous instinct into a bitter grudge. It erodes the foundation of a democratic society, which depends on citizens trusting that their institutions are working for them, not against them.
One of the most effective ways this grudge was amplified was through the coordinated-looking campaign “Russia Is Not My Enemy,” which began spreading on X in late September. It was a masterpiece of emotional role reversal. The campaign did not defend Russia’s aggression directly. Instead, it invited people in Western countries to see Moscow as a wounded giant, a country unfairly victimized by NATO, by EU leaders, by a hostile press, by centuries of Western arrogance. This resonated with a certain kind of frustration, especially among people who already felt alienated from their own governments. The message was simple: “They have been lying to you about Russia. The real enemy is the European Union.” The campaign was promoted by users in multiple countries, but it did not grow organically alone. Russian diplomatic accounts amplified it, giving it official legitimacy and helping it trend. It was a perfect example of how modern disinformation works: it borrows a genuine grievance—such as resentment toward remote bureaucrats in Brussels—and then attaches it to a false portrayal of Moscow as a peace-loving victim. For a casual reader scrolling through social media, the campaign seemed like a groundswell of public opinion, a brave awakening, even an act of rebellion against the establishment. But in reality, it was a carefully designed mirror, reflecting back the insecurities of European audiences in a way that served the Kremlin’s interests. The tragedy is that many people who shared those posts likely believed they were being independent thinkers. They were not. They were carrying water for an authoritarian state that had invaded its neighbor, shelled civilians, and destroyed entire cities—while they were being persuaded to chant that Russia was the victim. That is the cold, frightening power of modern information manipulation: it turns ordinary people, sometimes with good intentions, into amplifiers of a message that is designed to divide them for the benefit of an autocrat.
Elections and major social events provided even more fertile ground for these divisive messages. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Serbia, and in the German state of Saxony, political campaigns became playgrounds for manipulators who understood that democracy is never more vulnerable than when citizens are choosing their leaders. False claims targeted political opponents, with fabricated quotes, doctored videos, and out-of-context gaffes flooding local Facebook groups, Telegram channels, and X feeds. The goal was not simply to help one candidate win; it was to make people believe that the entire democratic process was corrupt, that every politician was a pawn of foreign powers, and that voting was pointless. If enough people lose faith, then the electoral system loses its legitimacy, and the only voices that remain clear and strong are those of extremists and outsourced propagandists. In the Balkans, the death of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić added a particularly poisonous layer to this atmosphere. Instead of treating his death as a chance for sober reflection on the horrors of the 1990s, manipulation networks used it to inflame old wounds. Historical revisionism flourished: murderers were reframed as heroes, victims were retold as villains, and national grief was twisted into political mobilization. Social events such as these are not just moments of collective memory; they are opportunities to rewrite the past in ways that justify present-day divisions. In Saxony, meanwhile, fears about immigration and integration were deliberately inflamed in the run-up to the vote, with manipulators using the language of ordinary citizens—the language of worried parents and proud locals—to spread panic. None of this is accidental. It is a playbook, repeated across borders, that exploits the most sensitive moments of public life to deepen suspicion, anger, and fracture. Democracy requires a measure of trust—trust in facts, trust in procedures, trust in each other—and every false claim, every manipulated image, every angry hashtag chips away at that trust for a clear political purpose: to weaken the West from within.
If we step back and look at the techniques, we see familiar patterns that resurface again and again, regardless of country or language. One of the most consistent is taking authentic material out of context. A real video of a crowded refugee camp, a genuine photograph of a damaged building, a legitimate quote from an official—these are taken and placed inside a completely false frame narrative, giving the lie a veneer of credibility. Another technique is relying on unverified sources. The manipulators do not need proof; they need plausibility. A telegrams account with no track record, a pseudonymous Twitter personality, a website that looks like news but is actually a factory of falsehoods—these become the “evidence” cited by bots and paid followers. Emotionally charged framing is another favorite tool. The content is designed to provoke outrage, fear, or despair, because these emotions cloud judgment and lower our defenses. If a reader is angry, they are less likely to click on the link, check the source, or ask whether the claim makes any sense. Inflammatory headlines, dramatic music in videos, shocking images—all of this is curated for maximum emotional impact. And finally, there is the systematic attack on public institutions. Whenever the state broadcaster, the electoral commission, the central bank, or the public health agency is repeatedly described as corrupt, incompetent, or foreign-controlled, the entire infrastructure of democratic governance begins to crumble in the public mind. What is striking, as the report notes, is that although individual claims often reflected local political debates—Saxony had its own particular issues, Serbia had its own historical baggage, Bosnia had its own ethnic tensions—the overarching methods, and even many of the exact narratives, were nearly identical across all of them. This points to a centrally coordinated approach, or at least to an ecosystem where templates and tactics are shared across borders. The specifics change to fit the audience, but the essence is the same: divide, erode, deceive, and win.
Taken together, these findings describe a threat that is not static, but constantly adapting to current events while returning to familiar themes. The manipulation machine learns from each crisis, each election, each social movement, and it adjusts its messages accordingly. What remains constant is the underlying mission: weakening support for Ukraine, eroding trust in European institutions, exploiting migration-related tensions, and deepening political divisions wherever they exist. But recognizing this is not a reason for despair; it is a reason for vigilance and resilience. Human beings are not helpless victims of disinformation. We have the capacity to pause before sharing, to check sources, to ask who benefits from our outrage, and to demand higher standards from our leaders and platforms. We can refuse to let the suffering of Ukrainian civilians become a tool for cynicism, and instead let it renew our commitment to truth and solidarity. We can see through the “Russia Is Not My Enemy” campaign by remembering who actually invaded whom, and by holding onto the simple, unheroic truth that victims of aggression deserve support. We can enter elections with our eyes open, understanding that fake claims will be thrown at us from every side, and that the health of our democracy depends on our willingness to resist the pull of easy lies. The manipulators are sophisticated, but they are not invincible. They thrive on loneliness, fear, and exhaustion—but those are not the only human emotions. There is also courage, curiosity, and compassion. If we nurture those, if we talk to our neighbors, if we revisit our news habits, and if we remember that every Ukrainian mother and every anxious European family is more than a pawn in someone else’s game, then the manipulation will fail. The full report offers a detailed map of how these efforts unfold. But the final response to it will not be written in Moscow or Brussels. It will be written in hearts and minds of millions of ordinary people who simply refuse to let their empathy be weaponized against them.