By EUvsDisinfo
Five recurring false narratives the Kremlin uses to justify and distort its war against Ukraine.
Russia has carried out online disinformation and FIMI campaigns against Europe and Ukraine for over a decade. After the illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, these activities grew rapidly in scale and intensity. The Kremlin now uses information manipulation as a key tool in its confrontation with the West. Alongside the war in Ukraine, Russia is also waging an aggressive information war against Europe.
Ahead of the fourth anniversary of the invasion, this overview examines some of the most widespread manipulative narratives promoted by the Kremlin and amplified by aligned media and online networks. Many of these narratives have circulated since 2014, yet they remain active and adaptable.
Myth 1: ‘The EU wants the war in Ukraine to continue’
The notion of a ‘war-mongering European Union’ is a mainstay of Russian information manipulation. With intensifying peace efforts, the false claim that EU leaders want the war to drag on is also intensifying, with claims that the EU is seeking to derail President Donald Trump’s peace diplomacy. According to the Kremlin, the EU is doing this out of ‘Russophobia’ – a pathological hatred of all things Russian – and because EU leaders want to transform the EU into a military alliance.
These claims are false: in fact, the EU has consistently pushed for a just, genuine peace in Ukraine that would preserve the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Its moves towards a stronger defence industrial base are purely defensive; there are no plans to turn the EU into an alternative to NATO.
Myth 2: ‘Russia is fighting a proxy war against NATO’
Kremlin messaging persistently claims that NATO and the ‘wider West’ is ‘at war’ with Russia and that Ukraine is fighting a ‘proxy war’ on behalf of the West. For the first time in history, the claim goes, Russia is fighting alone against the entire West; Russia, in this version of history, is the true victim today, not the aggressor.
But in the real world, it was Russia which launched the unprovoked and unjustified full-scale invasion on 22 February 2022, and Ukraine which has been defending itself since then, with support from its Western allies in line with Article 51 of the UN Charter. Framing Russia’s invasion as a proxy war serves to portray unprovoked aggression as a defensive and legitimate move.
Myth 3: ‘Europe’s economy has collapsed due to anti-Russian sanctions’
Europe is depicted as falling into an ‘economic abyss’ and ‘collapsing’ under the burden of aid to Ukraine and the negative impact of its own sanctions against Russia. Outlets claim that ordinary Europeans are paying for the reckless halt to Russian energy imports decided by ‘Brussels elites’ or the ‘Brussels bureaucracy’, again out of a pathological hatred of Russia. By focussing on the ‘Russian threat’, EU leaders supposedly distract their citizens from domestic failings.
Sanctions against Russia were imposed in response to Russia’s illegal aggression against Ukraine, not out of alleged ‘Russophobia’ by ‘Brussels elites’. The claim that the sanctions hurt only Europe and not Russia is refuted by data which shows that Russia’s economy is showing serious signs of strain while the EU as a whole overtook China as the second-largest global economic actor by GDP in 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Myth 4: ‘Ukraine and its leaders are corrupt’
This myth paints Ukraine as an endemically corrupt country whose venal leaders sell Western weapons on the black market and pocket donated aid. Particularly creative falsehoods have alleged that President Zelenskyy used illicit funds to buy Hitler’s Mercedes, purchase a mansion from King Charles II, and scoop up another mansion from US entertainer Bill Cosby.
No evidence accompanies these claims because – surprise – no evidence exists. In the ‘Hitler’s Mercedes’ case, disinformation specialists appear to have created a fake news outlet – the ‘Seattle Tribune’ – purely to spread this single false allegation. Credible news outlets, however, have debunked these claims. For example, the BBC investigated alleged online sites where Ukraine was purportedly selling Western weapons and found them to be fake.
It is true that Ukraine has struggled with corruption, but pro-Kremlin commentators intentionally turn a blind eye to their own country’s issues in that regard. For example, according to a transparency index that one outlet incorrectly cited, Russia is more corrupt than Ukraine.
Myth 5: ‘Ukraine is a terrorist state led by Nazis’
Pro-Kremlin outlets consistently label the ‘regime’ in Kyiv as ‘terrorist’ and ‘illegitimate’, claiming that Ukrainian forces ‘fire at civilians and doctors’ while Russian strikes are purely military. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is regularly described as an illegitimate president and mocked as a ‘cocaine Führer’, that is, a drug addict and a Nazi.
What the Kremlin calls ‘Ukrainian terrorist attacks’ are actually military operations against legitimate targets under the laws of war as Ukraine defends itself against Russian aggression. The Kremlin has consistently sought to link Ukraine to terrorism by falsely claiming Ukrainian involvement in a variety of incidents and attacks, from the Crocus City Hall terror attack to attempts on the lives of US President Donald Trump and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Slandering the Kremlin’s opponents – including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish – as Nazis is a well-documented and recurring disinformation technique without any grounding in reality. This has also allowed Russia to frame its unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine as a necessary de-Nazification operation. Slandering Zelenskyy and his government as drug addicts is likewise a time-honoured practice by the Kremlin disinformation machine, without any basis in reality.
By EUvsDisinfo
