Disinformation Crash Course 1#: The Narratives
But what do we mean when we talk about a disinformation narrative? These can be defined as stories aimed at specific groups which contain messages that maliciously aim to influence the way people respond to different events.
All Eastern Neighbourhood countries were once part of the Soviet Union and since its fall in 1991, Russia has sought to keep them within its own geopolitical sphere with the Kremlin simultaneously wielding disinformation as a weapon against EU alignment.
By understanding the narratives targeting the EU’s Eastern partners and states beyond, we can begin to comprehend the roots of disinformation and how exactly the accounts are spun to make them logical and appealing to the target audiences.
This is the first article in a series of three blog posts on disinformation.
Imperialism
Russian state and media discourse have often tried to impose an identity rooted in imperial narratives such as the Slavic Triune myth. There Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are seen as ‘brother nations’ whose fate is to unite under a pan-Russian banner. This reduction of Ukrainian and Belarusian identity to mere branches of the Russian civilisation has been used to justify the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The notion of a common destiny going back centuries was also present during the formation of the Russia-Belarus Union State in 1997.
This is not a new phenomenon – during both the Tsarist and Soviet periods, the authorities imposed Russian as a lingua franca in administration, education and religious life in all states within its orbit. Any expression of other cultural or linguistic belonging was treated as a threat to unity. Laws such as the Ems Decree of 1876 banned almost all printing in Ukrainian, whilst in 1933 Belarusian was morphed into the so-called narkamaŭka (Belarusian: наркамаўка) to bring it grammatically closer to Russian. Even now these languages are still often presented as dialects of Russian or their existence is simply denied.
Traditional values
In many Eastern partner countries, the Orthodox Church is instrumental in spreading narratives that EU membership is incompatible with local values. Very often ‘local values’ are interpreted simply as conservative views. And since they are held by significant parts of the population, it is easy for disinformation to scare citizens into thinking that their ‘cultural identity’ will have to be compromised.
Pro-Western President Maia Sandu was framed by her political opponents as the antithesis of Moldova’s traditional family structure, as she is an unmarried woman with no children. Deepfakes of Sandu closing churches, changing her gender and organising gay parades further played on fears across conservative communities that the EU sought to “impose homosexuality”.
State-aligned narratives present the dynamics between traditional values and EU integration as a battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Support for “morally corrupt” Western liberalism is placed in the latter category. Meanwhile, the different branches of the Orthodox Church which champion social conservatism fall into the former. This dichotomous rhetoric was used as propaganda against Euromaidan and during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine to justify military and political interference. Similarly in the 2024 Georgian elections, it was used to influence voting behaviour.
Western conspiracies
Many anti-Western narratives associated with EU cooperation can be traced back to the fall of the USSR. The collapse of the Soviet Union happened almost overnight and many saw this as the loss of a “great past”. So when narratives started going around about a Western-backed conspiracy designed to destroy Russia and the Eastern bloc, many people finally received an explanation which helped them to make sense of their new reality. This is why many still regard alignment with the EU (viewed as an extension of ‘the collective West’) as treacherous.
A particularly widespread claim is that the EU and the United States are responsible for supporting “colour revolutions” e.g., Euromaidan in 2014 and the 2020-21 Belarusian protests, with the aim of destabilising Russia and pulling away countries from its perceived sphere of influence. This is why pro-Kremlin officials dubbed Ukraine a ‘puppet state’ and accuse governments of “following an agenda imposed from abroad”.
Since the start of the full-scale Invasion of Ukraine in 2022, disinformation campaigns have also begun more to aggressively assert the presence of security risks with EU integration. One such narrative that has gained momentum is the ‘Second Front Conspiracy’. It states that the West is trying to incite war in countries like Georgia with the goal of militarily destabilising Russia and relieving pressure from Ukraine. By selling narratives of government bodies who place external (Western) interests above national ones, Moscow is presented as their “only reliable protector”. In this way, the Kremlin maintains considerable influence over its former regions.
Nowadays, escaping disinformation seems almost impossible. With so many narratives on so many different subjects resting their hand over Europe, the Eastern partner countries and beyond, it’s easy to get caught up in stories spun from people’s sensitivities. However, one thing these narratives all have in common is how they have managed to convince the masses that we are living in a world divided in camps. The East and the West. It may sometimes feel as if any attempt to have a conversation about disinformation turns into bouts of whataboutism sparring matches.
But polarisation has a very sneaky way of making us forget that the ultimate reference point in any nation’s debate is the will of its citizens. And here we must ask, are we all being guaranteed the right to reliable sources of information ? Should it not be a priority to ensure a free-thinking population?
Perhaps it is through championing education and critical thinking that change will be driven in the direction of guaranteed human dignity and the hopes for a better future.
External links and sources:
The Failure of the Language Policy in Belarus, Yuliya Brel https://udspace.udel.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/cc6e1c77-7ece-4cc8-90e2-3156f39c1c7a/content
Geopolitical Narratives on Belarus in Contemporary Russia, Ian Klinke https://www.jstor.org/stable/23616092
The Propaganda of Deepening Belarusian-Russian Integration in the Pro-Russian Internet Media of Belarus, Taras Poloviy https://www.studiapolitologiczne.pl/pdf-145018-70558?filename=The-Propaganda-of-Deepeni.pdf [in Russian]
Belarusian Identity: the Impact of Lukashenka’s Rule, Vadzim Smok https://belarusdigest.com/papers/belarusianidentity.pdf
Belarus: At a Crossroads in History, Jan Zaprudnik https://archive.org/details/belarusatcrossro00zapr/mode/2up
Pro-Russian Disinformation Narratives in Georgia Since Russia’s Full-scale Invasion of Ukraine, Tatia Chikhladze and Shota Shiukashvili https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/94107/ssoar-caucasusad-2023-135-chikhladze_et_al-Pro-Russian_Disinformation_Narratives_in_Georgia.pdf?sequence=1&lnkname=ssoar-caucasusad-2023-135-chikhladze_et_al-Pro-Russian_Disinformation_Narratives_in_Georgia.pdf
Russian Anti-Western Disinformation, Media Consumption and Public Opinion in Georgia, Ralph S. Clem, Erik S. Herron, Ani Tepnadze https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372671125_Russian_Anti-Western_Disinformation_Media_Consumption_and_Public_Opinion_in_Georgia
Russian Propaganda Narratives in Georgia, Sergi Kapanadze https://politicsgeo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Russian-Propaganda-Narratives-in-Georgia-Sergi-Kapanadze.pdf
Soviet Language Policy in Georgian Culture, Irine Chachanidze https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206639/1/Chachanidze_paper9.pdf
Rise of Nationalist Populism in Georgia, Bidzina Lebanidze https://gip.ge/publication-post/rise-of-nationalist-populism-in-georgia-implications-for-european-integration/
The “Global War Party” populist conspiracy in Georgia: origins and framework, Sandro Tabatadze and Nika Gigauri https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2025.2593453
Russian Narratives and Resilience to Disinformation in Moldova (in “Russian Analytical Digest”), Denis Cenusa https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/37f1657b-6ea0-4026-9a32-d61320c82654
Dismiss, Distort, Distract, Dismay: the Civil Society in Moldova in the Face of Disinformation, Roxana-Maria Nistor and Andreea-Irina Stretea https://ojs.mtak.hu/index.php/civilszemle/article/view/17546
Russian Disinformation on Social Media: Uncovering Narratives in Moldova Since the 2022 Onset of the War in Ukraine, Nina Alexandra Schoenbaechler https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/195232
Language, Ethnicity and Political Preferences (in “Moldovan Analytical Digest”), Eleanor Knott, Margherita Gobbat, Maxim Slav https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/moldovananalyticaldigest-003.pdf
(Pro)-Russian (dis)information in Moldova: eroding vertical trust in Sandu and the PAS government ?, Elena Simanschi https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2025.2500389
Colonization of minds: Ukraine between Russian colonialism and Western Orientalism, Galyna Kotliuk https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1206320/full
Imperial nationalism as the driver behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Taras Kuzio https://scispace.com/pdf/imperial-nationalism-as-the-driver-behind-russia-s-invasion-yd35fcyx26.pdf
Ukraine and Russia: Legacies of the Imperial past and Competing Memories, Andreas Kappeler https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262384747_Ukraine_and_Russia_Legacies_of_the_Imperial_past_and_Competing_Memories
Conspiracy Theories in Post-Soviet Russia, Ilya Yablokov https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/181498/1/Yablokov%20Conspiracy%20theories%20in%20post-Soviet%20Russia%20Chapter%2024%20pre-print.pdf
Forward, into the past! Russia’s politics of memory in the service of ‘eternal’ authoritarianism, Maria Domańska and Jadwiga Rogoża https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-report/2021-11-22/forward-past
Potemkin conservatism. An ideological tool of the Kremlin, Witold Rodkiewicz and Jadwiga Rogoża https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/point-view/2015-02-03/potemkin-conservatism-ideological-tool-kremlin
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