While ramping up its military aggression, Russia has become even more relentless on the information front
The most dangerous disinformation is not the lie you spot, but the one you start to accept as reasonable, writes Svetoslav Malinov.
Svetoslav Malinov, is Foreign Influence Risk Analyst, Democracy Shield Task Force, Center for the Study of Democracy, Sofia
The US President’s initiative for cease-fire and lasting peace in Ukraine has sent the Russian hybrid warfare machine into overdrive. Russia has insisted it wants peace in Ukraine. It has done so loudly and repeatedly – on international stages, in Kremlin-backed media, and increasingly, through a sprawling Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) campaign, aimed at Western audiences. But while Moscow crafts the image of a misunderstood peacemaker unfairly maligned by Kyiv and Brussels, its actions, both online and on the battlefield, go into the exact opposite direction – ramping up the war on civilian targets, preparing the next summer offensive on Ukrainian positions, and unleashing the next barrage of nuclear annihilation threats.
In early April 2025, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service publicly warned of an intensifying Russian disinformation campaign designed to portray Kyiv as the sole obstacle to peace. The Kremlin’s latest narrative claimed Russia was the reasonable party, open to talks – but not with the current Ukrainian government. The message was simple: if peace remains elusive, blame Zelenskyy and “root causes”, Moscow-talk for blaming Ukraine and NATO for the conflict.
In response, President Zelenskyy reiterated his openness to talks just days earlier, albeit comparing such negotiations to “talking to missiles”. Ukraine even offered an unconditional ceasefire, yet Russia responded not with diplomacy, but with deliberate escalation, killing 34 people in Sumy in its deadliest attack for 2025. This came despite a 12-hour discussion between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh in late March, aimed at securing a 30-day ceasefire.
While ramping up its military aggression, Russia has become even more relentless on the information front – escalating its FIMI operation campaigns.
Russia’s disinformation machine roots stretch back to the Cold War, when the KGB waged what it called “active measures” – a blend of propaganda, false flag operations, and reflexive control designed to shift Western discourse and decision-making without firing a shot. Today, those methods have evolved into a sophisticated digital battlefield, amplified by social media, deepfakes, paid influencers and disinformation narratives that blend truth, fiction, and conspiracy into a single toxic thread.
Such distortions facilitate the echoing of Kremlin’s talking points, quietly absorbed into mainstream discourse – a slow, almost imperceptible form of cognitive capture, where borrowed language begins to shape how policymakers and publics alike perceive the conflict.
One of the most effective weapons in Russia’s FIMI arsenal is the myth that NATO enlargement is the “root cause” of Ukraine’s invasion. It resonates with audiences already skeptical of Western power and eager to believe in a narrative that assigns shared blame. Yet the facts betray the logic: his real fear is not encirclement, but Ukraine’s territorial independence. A democratic Ukraine is intolerable to a regime that survives through control – of territory, truth, and perception. That fear fuels not just FIMI, but escalating violence on the ground. In Kherson, this has taken a particularly brutal form – what many now call the human safari.
After Russian forces retreated across the Dnipro, they left behind no peace only constant shelling and a horrifying pattern of drone strikes on civilians. Videos uploaded by Russian drone operators themselves show civilians being targeted in real time: cyclists, drivers, street cleaners, even ambulances. The pattern is clear – these drones, often equipped to drop grenades or act as first-person-view kamikaze units, seek movement – any sign of life -and erase it.
Adding another layer of cruelty, Moscow has tried to rewrite this atrocity through the use of disinformation techniques, a favorite Orwellian Kremlin tactics. A growing narrative, amplified by foreign pro-Kremlin voices and even by the Russian Foreign Ministry, alleges that foreigners are paying to join Ukraine’s front lines in safari-style excursions, calling it one of “Kyiv’s perversions.” The assertion is that Kyiv, not Moscow, is behind the commodification of war. The truth, however, is far different. These so-called “safari trips” are humanitarian convoys, organized by volunteers who travel from Estonia to Kyiv to deliver aid – not engaging directly on the frontlines.
As independent journalists have exposed, the real human safari is happening under Russian command, in Kherson. A recently released documentary lays out the evidence in harrowing detail – civilian lives shattered by a war Russia pretends to want to end. It is disinformation judo – Kremlin-style: flip your guilt onto the opponent.
In such ways, Russia doesn’t just lie about its peace intentions – it stages them to give them the appearance of truth. Cloaked in ceasefires it won’t honor and negotiators it won’t empower. It whispers peace through diplomats while firing missiles at power plants. And online, it paints Ukraine as obstinate and the West as provocative, denying anything from its aggressive war in Ukraine is true, hoping that if the world is tired enough, confused enough, or divided enough, it will begin to believe the fiction.
To see through this charade is not only a matter of truth – it is a matter of endurance – Russia’s favorite state of constant war footing, which it can pitch to its population as patriotic. Because the most dangerous disinformation is not the lie you spot, but the one you start to accept as reasonable. And there cannot be peace without exposing and accounting for the most gruesome atrocities of Kremlin’s hybrid war campaign on Ukraine.
