In a cross-border collaboration that brought together newsrooms across Europe, including The Journal, journalists set out to look beneath the surface of Ukraine’s and Moldova’s long roads toward the European Union—and to expose the quiet, relentless information war being fought alongside the physical one. The old saying that truth is the first casualty of war feels almost too gentle for what is happening here. Long before Russian tanks rolled deeper into Ukraine, and certainly since, truth has been under systematic attack, not just on the battlefield but in the stories people are told, the fears they are encouraged to feel, and the doubts sown about democratic institutions. Even this summer, when claims circulated that Russia had made significant military gains, careful analysis of the underlying report showed the opposite—that Ukraine had actually advanced further—yet the false interpretation had already travelled. As Dublin prepared to host a major European Political Community summit, with dozens of government leaders arriving on Irish shores, the threat of hybrid warfare was high on the agenda. Security forces in Ireland said they could not definitively blame Russia for a series of coordinated threats that emerged that week, but they also did not rule it out. Disinformation campaigns, officials and experts warned, are a key part of hybrid warfare. For many Irish people, the EU presidency has forced a crash course in these tactics. But for Eastern European neighbours, this is not a new lesson. It is a lived reality, especially in the continuing battle for control of the narrative about Ukraine, Moldova, and what it might mean for them to join the EU.
Across Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, media organisations have become acutely aware of what they describe as Russian disinformation about EU enlargement, often spread through Telegram channels and Facebook posts. The narratives are varied but familiar: that joining the EU means losing state sovereignty; that the EU is using Ukraine as a proxy in a war against Russia; that Ukraine could be carved up among EU member states. Some of these stories are absurd on their face, but they are repeated relentlessly, adapted to local anxieties, and aimed at undermining public support for European integration. This is not a recent phenomenon. More than a decade ago, the EU set up a task force to challenge Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns. In 2022, months after the full-scale invasion began, the OECD published a policy paper describing Russian disinformation narratives as “often false, or obscure facts with half-truths and ‘whataboutisms’.” Just last year, the EU Delegation to Ukraine examined information manipulation targeting Ukraine-EU relations. Cristina Gherasimov, Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, visited Ireland earlier this year and told The Journal that disinformation “continues constantly.” She called it one of Moscow’s most powerful tools—not necessarily aimed at Moldova or Ukraine alone, but at the credibility of the EU itself. The message, she said, is that candidate countries are “not ready,” that the EU is weak and cannot protect its citizens, and that new member states would be treated as poor relations, unable to compete in agriculture or other sectors. In Moldova, one common narrative warns that all land will be expropriated once the country joins the EU, deliberately evoking memories of the Soviet era to instil fear that the EU is not a protector but a predator.
Moldova has become something of a laboratory for these tactics. The Stimson Center, a Washington-based research organisation, called the country “a testing ground for hybrid warfare operations” that could shape similar efforts across Europe. Before Moldova’s parliamentary election, social media platforms were flooded with fabricated posts, videos, and websites, some created using artificial intelligence. One especially bizarre fake, reported by Euronews, impersonated the celebrity magazine OK! with a story claiming the Moldovan president was involved in a celebrity sperm scandal. The fabricated article, which falsely said Maia Sandu was buying sperm from gay celebrity donors to have a child, even used the name of a real reporter to make it seem credible. It was absurd, but it was also dangerous. Disinformation of this kind is designed to erode political reputations, stoke moral panic, and steer voters toward particular agendas. Fact-checking and media organisations in Moldova have tracked many other lines of attack: farms closing because Moldovan agricultural products are supposedly not wanted in the EU, electricity bills soaring after membership, and the spectre of same-sex marriage being imposed on a conservative society. Romanian fact-checking website Veridica has documented claims that Moldova could become a destination for migrants, that it could lose its statehood, or even be annexed by Romania. The point is not whether any of this is true. The point is that these stories feed on existing fears and vulnerabilities, and they adapt quickly, as Gherasimov put it, depending on the weaknesses of each society targeted.
Ukraine faces its own set of narratives. Vladyslav Lesyk, a journalist at the Ukrainian media outlet Rubryka, explained that one of the primary Russian claims is that Ukraine’s EU accession efforts are futile. Russian sources have spread fakes saying that granting candidate status was merely a formal decision with no real benefits, a story meant to demoralise Ukrainian society and make people believe that the painful reforms required for membership are pointless. Another recurring narrative is that joining the EU would mean Ukraine losing its sovereignty. This builds on a broader Russian storyline, maintained since the start of the conflict in 2014, that Ukraine is an illegitimate state controlled by the West, particularly the EU and the United States. It is part of a long history of such fabrications. EUvsDisinfo, the EU’s disinformation tracking operation, has documented countless examples, including the infamous 2014 fake story of a boy allegedly crucified by Ukrainian nationalists in Slovyansk—a tale crafted to incite hatred. Meanwhile, for European audiences, the narratives lean in a different direction: Ukraine as a burden. It is portrayed as poor, corrupt, and destined to drain the European budget. A specific sub-narrative focuses on Ukrainian grain and the supposed harm it does to European farming, a story that has been pushed for years to sow discord between Ukraine and its neighbours. Yet, as the European Policy Centre has pointed out, Ukraine’s membership would bring real benefits: access to its vast energy potential, stronger EU food security, and ready trade in critical minerals. The truth is far more complicated than the caricatures, but the caricatures spread easily. Telegram, Lesyk noted, is the primary hub for Russian narratives in Ukraine because it allows anonymous channels and is one of the most popular sources of information in the country.
Georgia offers a different, and in some ways more troubling, lesson. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Georgia has drifted in an increasingly authoritarian direction, suspending its EU accession talks and deepening ties with Moscow. The ruling Georgian Dream party recently sought to ban the five main opposition parties, a move now being challenged in court, and the European Parliament warned that this puts Georgia’s EU membership path at risk. Online, anti-Western and anti-EU narratives have flourished. Organisations like OC Media have tracked coordinated information operations, and the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy has described material promoting “anti-Western, particularly anti-EU narratives.” Common themes include the idea that the EU is a threat to Georgian values, especially through support for LGBTQ+ rights; that the EU will interfere in Georgia’s domestic affairs; and that the EU and the US want to spark conflict in the region. Protests in Georgia have often featured EU flags, a sign of how contested this future remains. But Salome Khvedelidze of OC Media pointed out a crucial difference between Georgia and its neighbours. In Ukraine and Moldova, anti-EU disinformation is driven by Russian proxies, Russia-backed or funded media, and certain political figures, while the governments themselves remain pro-European. In Georgia, the main source of anti-EU propaganda is not external. It comes from within—from the government itself. That makes the fight for public opinion even harder, because the institutions meant to lead the country toward Europe are the ones pushing people away from it.
In the end, what emerges from all of this is a picture of disinformation as a shape-shifting, relentless force. It is always changing, but always the same. It tells each society what it is most afraid to hear. To Ukrainians, it whispers that their efforts are pointless and that their government is a puppet. To Moldovans, it evokes the trauma of Soviet expropriation and the fear of losing their identity. To Georgians, it warns that European integration means betrayal of tradition and national sovereignty. To Europeans in the West, it says that enlargement will bankrupt them, flood their markets with cheap grain, and undermine their standards. It is not always possible to verify which narratives originate directly from the Kremlin and which are amplified by local actors with their own agendas. But there is little doubt about Russia’s attitude toward the EU, or its long history of using disinformation as a weapon. For Ireland, hosting European leaders at a moment of such instability, the lesson is that the battle for truth is not abstract. It is happening on phone screens, in social media feeds, in anonymous Telegram channels, and in the quiet erosion of trust. The first casualty of war may indeed be truth, but it does not have to be the last. The work of journalists, fact-checkers, and media organisations across Europe—sharing information across borders, comparing notes, and refusing to let lies go unchallenged—is itself a form of resistance. The truth may arrive late, but it can still arrive.