The Kremlin’s Cognitive Assault on Europe
Abstract
This article examines Russia’s use of cognitive warfare to target Europe’s populace to disrupt Western aid to Ukraine. Using the “firehose of falsehood” model, Moscow disseminates high-volume, multi-source disinformation aimed at injecting pro-Russian talking points into democratic discourse, which influences selectorates to resist continued Ukrainian support. A case study of Rheinmetall’s cancelled factory in Grossenhain, Germany illustrates how these Russian talking points produce tangible strategic effects. The article concludes by assessing the challenges of defending open societies against such cognitive attacks while preserving democratic norms.
Introduction
Only seven months prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin initiated his information campaign justifying the decision for military action with an essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In the revealing essay, he unambiguously stated his view that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people—a single whole.” Given the subsequent invasion of Ukraine, it is not unreasonable to conclude that this essay was a cognitive pre-deployment to legitimize his decision for the pending invasion. The speech cites shared historical, linguistic, and religious ties between the two people and how “neo-fascists” backed by the West foment an anti-Russia attitude that is unacceptable. While this perspective is unsurprising, the way it propagated across the internet reveals the nature of the information war surrounding the Russo-Ukraine War.
Putin’s essay was originally posted in English on the Kremlin’s official website for presidential news. It was subsequently reposted on a blog known as “The Saker: A Bird’s Eye View of the Vineyard,” which was (the website has since been deleted) a pro-Russian site run by a retired Swiss Army officer named Andrei Raevsky who resides in Florida. The site publishes in Italian, Spanish, German, and Russian. A European Union source suggests that at one point the site had more than 360,000 visitors in a month. The website appealed to U.S. ultranationalists and religious fundamentalists who distrust the “elite” groups of “Anglo-Zionist” who allegedly control the so called “deep state” within American government. Themes of institutional distrust and Western imperialism dominated the blog’s narrative. In all circumstances, Raevsky lauded the virtues of Russian greatness.
Working through bloggers like Raevsky is a technique that Russia used to disseminate what Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews have identified as a “firehose of falsehood.” They note that psychological research suggests false information is more persuasive when it comes from multiple sources, is disseminated in high volume, and originates from a source with similar characteristics. Thus, bloggers such as Raevsky are especially effective because he is a naturalized American citizen living in Florida who ostensibly provides an internal perspective and has a large following. When these characteristics combine, they often create an “illusory truth effect.” Since the Kremlin is not bound to truth standards, they have a first mover advantage as they disseminate fabricated stories that propagate disinformation while more trustworthy sources validate facts. The record is mixed, but Russia’s overall information campaign against Europe uses similar tactics and seems to be effective in terms of disrupting European support to Ukraine.
In this article, I explore the operational aspects of the Russo-Ukraine War, and how Russia views disrupting Western support to Ukraine as a key component of their attrition strategy. I then examine an interesting case study of how Russian talking points infected German political discourse in Grossenhain, Germany and prevented Rheinmetall, a prominent German arms manufacturer, from opening a new factory to increase production for material support to the Ukrainian war effort. This case study provides an example of how cognitive attack manifested in tangible strategic effects. The article closes with a discussion about the challenges of defending against such attacks.
Cognitive Warfare in the Russo-Ukraine War
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “NATO and the EU, through Ukraine, have declared war on Russia and are directly participating in it.” This is, of course, a cognitive warfare attack against European leaders based on a selective interpretation of reality. While it is true that European leaders committed considerable aid to Ukraine, this support was contingent on the fact that Russia launched an unprovoked attack against Ukraine in 2022, which is an internationally recognized sovereign state. The target of Lavrov’s cognitive attack was the European public, and the desired effect was to amplify a long-standing and fallacious Kremlin talking point that Russia is a victim of Western aggression.
The targeting logic behind such prevarications is to create a popular perception of “Russia as victim” to diminish public support for the Western European security policies to support Ukraine. In European democracies, popular perceptions matter because it is from the populace that “selectorates”—the voting public—choose ruling coalitions. If a foreign policy is perceived as unnecessarily aggressive and vulnerable to escalation, the selectorate might view this as a reason to remove a ruling coalition from office through the electoral process. For example, these concerns are especially acute in eastern Germany where 70 percent of the population worries about escalation with Russia and, as a result, 50 percent believe that German support has gone too far. Thus, it is not surprising that the AfD, an ultra-nationalist political party, “won the [2024] state election in Thuringia and came in a close second in Saxony and Brandenburg.” This pro-Russian perspective runs counter to many mainstream political leaders who saw Ukrainian battlefield success as evidence that Ukraine could win and decided to support their war of independence.
Ukraine communicated to Western leaders early in the war that they could, if properly supported, defend their homeland. The video of Volodymyr Zelensky with his cabinet in military fatigues defiantly announcing, “We are all here defending our independence, our state, and it will remain so. Glory to Ukraine!” was central to this effort. Only 30 seconds long, the video was meant to project Ukrainian resolve in the face of Russian aggression. Every video of Ukrainian success shared on social media demonstrated that Ukrainians might, against all odds, be able to repel the initial assault, and Western leaders responded. Thus, Ukrainian communications during this critical phase of the war might be considered a cognitive deployment to secure support.
As Ukraine successfully defended itself in early 2022, Western leaders signaled resolve and created a robust system that committed valuable war materials to Ukraine’s defense. The Baltic countries provided U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank weapons to Ukrainian military forces. As Ukrainian successes were communicated over social media, the military aid increased with Next Generation Light Antitank Weapons (NLAW) from Luxembourg, Bayraktar TB-2 drones from Turkey, tanks from the Czech Republic, and, most significantly, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) from the United States. Because of the increased military capability generated from such assistance, Ukraine stopped Russia’s advance on Kyiv, which surprised many specialists who predicted Ukrainian defeat.
Ukraine’s unexpected success changed the Kremlin’s theory of victory. The Russian attempt to quickly replace the pro-Western government in Kyiv with a puppet regime was delayed while they attempted to consolidate territorial gains in eastern Ukraine. The current conflict might be characterized as a war of attrition. In such wars, the ability to continuously generate warmaking forces and material is a critical capability. Putin identified Western material support as Ukraine’s critical capability, and much of the disinformation targeted opinion leaders who make statements that result in decreased public support for the war, thereby increasing political pressure on elected leaders to stop providing Ukraine much needed assistance. Far right leaders in Europe such as Dutch politician Thierry Baudet make public statements that “Russia does not want to conquer Ukraine at all. The Russians are acting defensively.” These are blatantly false claims that are echoed by other influential political leaders across Europe.
Indeed, Russian cognitive attacks mostly target the nationalist sentiments of ultra-right-wing political figures. In 2012, for example, a London group launched the “Conservative Friends of Russia” club in London. Malcom Rifkind, former UK foreign secretary and defense minister, served as honorary president of the club for a time. Rifkind has since resigned from the group along with many other Tory politicians. However, he is a significant opinion leader, and his brief association lends enduring credibility to Russia’s propaganda.
Another example is the link between Russia and the National Front party in France. According to well publicized news reports, Marine Le Pen’s opposition party, National Front, purportedly received up to €11 million of Russian financing. La Pen is unsurprisingly critical of the EU, NATO, and any sanctioning of Russia for aggression in Ukraine. In December 2023, European intelligence services released documents showing how Sergei Kiriyenko, a high official in Putin’s presidential administration, used social media (bots and troll farms) to inject Russian talking points into the political discourse. The tactic was to highlight how Western sanctions on Russia diminished the French people’s quality of life through inflation and decreased trade opportunities. The leaked documents suggest, at the very least, that French politicians from Le Pen’s party are useful conduits to achieve cognitive effects. The objective is merely to use fringe opinion leaders to inject pro-Russian ideas into public discourse across Western Europe. As a leading contributor to Ukraine’s military capability—€19.67 billion from January 2022 to October 2025—Germany has been a prime target for Russian disinformation.
The Case of Grossenhain
In 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz led a left leaning coalition government comprised largely of Social Democrats, the German Green Party, and the Free Democratic Party. His government was an early proponent of supporting Ukraine’s defense. In 2022, the German government provided €2 billion in military support. This support increased to €5.4 billion in 2023, and reports suggest that German support reached €8 billion in 2024. This level of commitment to Ukrainian aid made it difficult for the Scholz government to backdown for fear of a popular perception of strategic failure, which the Kremlin would leverage in its cognitive assault on the German population. Indeed, the German Ministry of Interior has publicized how the Kremlin “cement[s] its narrative of the anti-Russian West” and emboldens German politicians who argue that “Germany is broke” and to “stop helping Ukraine.”
Of particular interest to Russian cognitive operators are the so called Russland-Versteher (Russia Understanders), which constitutes a large minority of the German population that are sympathetic to Russia and most susceptible to cognitive attack. Like in France, Russian messaging in Germany targets this group with talking points suggesting that support to Ukraine comes at the expense of German prosperity. The Kremlin also successfully leverages nuclear saber rattling to portray continued Ukrainian support as opening the door to nuclear attack. Of course, the confrontation, according to Russian propaganda, is a result of NATO aggression against Russian victims, and the war is only an attempt to save Russia from the secular corruption of the West. The situation in Grossenhain, a small town in the German state of Saxony, provides an example of how Russian talking points infiltrate the political discourse to achieve disruptive effects.
To meet increased demand for Ukrainian armaments, Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, decided in 2023 to open a factory in Grossenhain. This factory would improve the economic prospects of the entire community and enable Germany’s provision of armaments for Ukraine. However, after Rheinmetall announced the decision, the City Council sent a letter to Scholz asking him to block the move, and Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), an ultra-right wing German political party, organized a rally protesting against Rheinmetall’s factory. Speakers at the rally condemned further Ukrainian support. AfD leaders generated a petition stating the town rejected “a further economic-military use” of the labor force. Sebastien Fischer, a center-right member of the Christian Democratic Union in the Saxony legislature, says “It’s difficult to explain to people why we should support Ukraine.” Kerstin Lauterbach, a Grossenhain city councilor, recited a common Russian propaganda encirclement theme saying, “I can imagine that Putin is feeling squeezed because NATO is slipping closer and closer.” André Wendt, an AfD member of Saxony’s state legislature, said that Western support was “putting us all at risk” for Russian retaliation. Under this political pressure, the Grossenhain factory was cancelled. The Grossenhain case demonstrates how Russia’s propaganda infiltrates the national discourse through opposition parties and has strategic effects.
Before its ouster in the 2025 elections, the Scholz government was committed to Ukraine’s defense, and the government was reluctant to back down. Conversely, the AfD leveraged Kremlin-aligned narratives to mobilize voter opposition to stall support to Ukraine’s defense and, in the case of Rheinmettal’s expansion to Grossenhain, was effective. These kinds of successes are significant for the future of Ukraine’s defense because the AfD continues to increase its political representation in the German electorate. In 2017, the AfD represented about 10 percent of the German electorate. However, in the 2025 national elections, the AfD secured 20.8 percent of the popular vote, which makes it the second largest party in Germany. Emboldened with electoral success, Alice Weidel, an influential AfD party leader, called for an end to Russian sanctions and Ukrainian aid. There is no way to prove whether Russian influence helped with AfD gains, but it is undeniable that Russian cognitive warfare was in play during this election period. The Kremlin used forged documents, fake witness statements, and fabricated social media posts to falsely portray Russian antagonists such as the Green Party’s Robert Habeck as financially corrupt and Friedrich Merz, the current German chancellor, as mentally unstable.
The Challenges of Cognitive Defense
Because of the West’s commitment to free speech, countering Russia’s propaganda is a challenging task. Scholars across the world have written much on how to thwart Russia’s propaganda effort. Initiatives like the Czech Center Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats and the Estonian Defense League offer a working model if properly resourced. For a longer term solution, investments in critical thinking classes in public schools, like Finland’s ongoing initiative, seek to help citizens learn how to filter propaganda. In all circumstances, the fundamental goal is to confront lies with truth as quickly as possible.
It is within the context of truth that the best defense against the Kremlin’s cognitive attack might be thwarted. The West needs to aggressively mobilize the truth of democratic liberalism in a robust cognitive warfare campaign of its own. For example, the Reagan administration responded aggressively in the cognitive space in the early 1980s, which some have argued led to the successful conclusion of the Cold War and the emancipation of Eastern Europe. When Soviet cognitive attack was identified in the US and Europe, they were quickly exposed to the relevant publics. In this way, the Reagan administration made the vulnerability of free speech an advantage. This means highlighting when opinion leaders are aligned with Russian talking points—a right enshrined in Western democratic traditions. As it was in the Cold War, public discourse that is free and open will eventually expose the dishonesty of Russian propaganda. Free systems will always, in the final count, win over autocratic systems. To be sure, Russia’s cognitive assault on Europe exploits the Western democratic tradition of free speech, but it is exactly within this tradition that Russia’s propaganda will collapse on itself.
Conclusion
Russia’s manipulation of information in the Russo-Ukraine War functions as a form of cognitive warfare designed to undermine Western public support for Ukraine by exploiting democratic vulnerabilities. Beginning with Vladimir Putin’s 2021 essay asserting the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, the Kremlin’s cognitive deployment was meant to legitimize military action and preempt international resistance, which is illustrative of Russia’s use of a “firehose of falsehood” strategy, in which high-volume, multi-source messaging creates the illusion of truth and amplifies Kremlin talking points.
By portraying Russia as a victim of NATO aggression and Western support for Ukraine as reckless or economically harmful, the Kremlin seeks to erode popular backing for continued military aid to Ukraine. Because democratic leaders depend on selectorates for political survival, sustained public opposition can constrain foreign policy even when governments remain formally committed to Ukraine’s defense.
Ukraine initially countered Russian narratives through effective strategic communication that emphasized resolve and battlefield success, helping secure substantial Western military assistance. However, as the conflict shifted toward a war of attrition, Russia recalibrated its information strategy to focus on disrupting the Western material base sustaining Ukraine.
Rheinmetall’s challenges in Grossenhain, Germany illuminates how Russian cognitive warfare targets local political discourse and achieves effects that disrupt Ukrainian aid. Opposition parties and local leaders echoed Kremlin framing about NATO encirclement, economic risk, and nuclear escalation, demonstrating how disinformation can translate into physical setbacks.
Russian cognitive warfare is exceptionally difficult to counter in open societies committed to free speech. While institutional counter-disinformation efforts and critical thinking education are valuable, a robust counter offensive rooted in Western democratic norms is the best way to defend populations from the effects of Russian cognitive attack. The good news is that freedom does not need to be sold—only communicated. It will win the day.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions presented in this article represent those of the author and do not represent the United States Army War College, the United States Army, or the Department of Defense.
