The Unrest in Europe: A Tangle of Reality and Disinformation

When protests erupted across France and Italy over the rising cost of living, the immediate question in government circles wasn’t just about economic pain—it was about who might be pulling the strings. In Rome, intelligence officials began investigating whether Moscow had a hand in the unrest, following a request from the Meloni government for a deeper look. Defence Minister Guido Crosetto spoke ominously of “hybrid warfare” being brought into Western countries through unlikely channels: TikTok, social media, and YouTube. He painted a picture of a patient, silent enemy using these platforms to sow chaos without the West even realizing it was happening. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani similarly refused to rule out “external orchestration,” suggesting the kind of interference that could swing election results across Europe. The implication was clear: the protests that rocked Milan, Turin, and Bologna—alongside Paris and other French cities—might not be purely what they seemed.

Yet here’s the uncomfortable truth that emerged as investigators dug deeper: there is simply no credible evidence that Russia coordinated these protests or the violence that accompanied them. Not in France, not in Italy, nowhere. European intelligence officials told the Financial Times that while their governments had instructed them to examine Moscow’s role in the unrest, it would be “too simplistic to say that the Russians are to blame.” The mobilizations are “genuine,” they said. An EU official echoed this perspective to Euronews, stating there was no “definitive information or confirmation that foreign information manipulation is behind the events.” Even Bruno Valensise, the head of Italy’s domestic intelligence agency AISI, ruled out foreign orchestration in his report to parliamentary oversight. The independent Disinformation Commission reached the same conclusion: the protest movement is “organic” and “home-grown,” even if it remains vulnerable to being distorted by various actors. Kevin Limonier, a specialist in Slavic studies at the University of Paris, went further, arguing that this suggestion of Russian conspiracy is itself a dangerous distraction—one that Russian actors secretly hope for, because it makes them “take centre stage and be seen as very powerful.” The whole thing, he suggested, is a trap that Western governments keep walking into.

To truly understand what happened, we need to separate three entirely different things that often get muddled together. First there is the possibility of a master plan to orchestrate the unrest from abroad—a hypothesis for which no evidence has been found. Then there are efforts to amplify the visibility of the unrest, to blow it up and make it seem bigger and more sinister than it naturally was. Finally, there is the exploitation of the causes and consequences of the protests for political purposes. The first remains speculation, but the second and third are thoroughly documented. French President Emmanuel Macron made this exact distinction during a state visit to Qatar, and his words are worth repeating: “For me, there is no visible foreign interference in the events. On the other hand, there has indeed been foreign manipulation of information afterwards.” He was referring to what he called “unacceptable and stupid comments” from various foreign leaders. This distinction matters enormously. It means the protests were real, driven by genuine grievances about the cost of living. But the story told about those protests—the narrative war that erupted around them—became something else entirely, a battleground where domestic and foreign actors projected their own agendas.

What did the Russian disinformation infrastructure actually do? Two major campaigns were active: Matryoshka and Storm-1516. Matryoshka is essentially a network of bots that began in late 2023, designed to flood journalists with anti-Ukrainian fake news and distribute replica versions of major news websites. Its tactics are so repetitive that researchers can spot it easily, and its impact has been correspondingly limited. When analysts counted posts related to the French demonstrations on social media, they found barely a handful with any meaningful reach. Storm-1516 is different. This is a network of real influencers, operating from Saint Petersburg and likely linked to Russian military intelligence. They create false narratives on commission or out of ideological alignment, using fake videos, manipulated photographs, and fabricated testimonies. This network has achieved substantial online visibility, but its current focus appears to be on discrediting the socialist candidate Raphaël Glucksmann rather than fomenting unrest. Alongside these, there are Russian-language Telegram channels and outlets like Sputnik and RT, but they are inaccessible from Europe and their reach has been minimal.

What’s genuinely striking about this story is that the most effective amplification of the unrest didn’t come from Russia at all—it came from elsewhere. Far-right influencers attracted ten times more views than foreign state actors. Consider this example: a French journalist on the right-wing channel CNews falsely claimed that demonstrators had set fire to every Jewish-owned shop on a Marseille street while sparing Muslim businesses. That video received at least eight million views, more than a hundred times the reach of pro-Russian accounts covering the same events. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in too, claiming the riots demonstrated France’s surrender to radical Islam—a remark that prompted a rare rebuke from Macron. Israeli foreign ministry accounts spread false links between protesters and pro-Palestinian groups, raising the specter of civil war in France. The BBC later discovered that one of the most widely shared images of violence had been generated using ChatGPT by an Israeli news outlet. American and German politicians framed the unrest as proof of failed immigration policies. A Dutch far-right commentator called for “remigration” as a preventive solution, and her video was viewed by more than 700,000 people. Even within France, pressure was mounting in strange directions. French domestic intelligence complained about government pressure to blame Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party for the violence—an attribution they said was “objectively false.” Several right-wing representatives called for the party to be dissolved entirely.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s that conspiracy theories are the easiest comfort zone during periods of major unrest. The French revolutionaries were once blamed on Freemasonry. Anti-vaccine protests were interpreted as Russian interference. And now, student protests against the cost of living are being blamed on Moscow. But the evidence tells a different story. The protests were real, they were organic, and they spread the way things spread in the age of social media—spontaneously, through accounts that seem to spring out of nowhere with catchy names like “17 October Movement” or “Italy in the Streets.” These movements are a gamble, not a prearranged plan. Yes, Russia has engaged in disinformation. Yes, there are campaigns designed to amplify unrest and exploit its fallout. But the Russians are among the least effective actors in this space. The real manipulation came from a much broader and more surprising coalition of domestic figures, foreign leaders, and opportunistic influencers, each with their own political agenda. And perhaps that’s the most uncomfortable truth of all—that the attempt to find a hidden puppet master obscures the reality that these protests arose from genuine grievances, and the forces that distorted their meaning were closer to home than anyone wanted to admit. The temptation to blame an external enemy is strong, but it often serves no one except those who seek to avoid confronting the real issues at hand. That was true in the eighteenth century, and it remains true today.