The European Union has identified Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) as a primary security threat, defining it as the strategic use of disinformation to exploit social divisions and undermine institutional trust. In response, the EU has developed an anti-disinformation toolbox, spearheaded by landmark legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the AI Act to defend its information environment. These malign campaigns are particularly potent when they weaponize identity. Against the backdrop of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Bulgaria remains a frequent target of the Kremlin’s operations that draw on economic, cultural, historical, and social cleavages to shape public discourse and policy outcomes.

This report provides a detailed mapping of the digital infrastructure used to mainstream one of the most effective forms of this manipulation – gender and identity-based disinformation. Beyond eroding trust in democratic institutions, suchcampaigns suppress participation, as well as silence and undermine the rights of vulnerable social groups. Targets and harms are consistent with EU-level threat assessments. Women in public life face sustained campaigns that sexualise, delegitimise, and intimidate, now augmented by emergent deepfake incidents against journalists. Ukrainian refugee women are reframed through dehumanising tropes that have coincided with recorded offline aggression. In parallel, a monetised “manosphere” funnels young men from lifestyle and entertainment content towards a normalised anti-egalitarian ideology, embedding misogyny and grievance into a scalable radicalisation pipeline. The report's findings lead to several recommendations, including the full implementation of the DSA, linguistically-competent takedown mechanisms for online abuse, curtailment of the financial incentives that sustain disinformation campaigns, as well as targeted measures against FIMI.