“The Frontline is Everywhere”
Read about the growing threat of Russia’s malign influence efforts – and the movement to combat them.
Also see
Moldova: Civil Society and Media Synergies
IWPR event brings together regional stakeholders to share best practices in combating malign influence.
New Centre to Tackle Disinformation in Moldova
IWPR launches one-stop shop for media and civil society to address Moldova’s hybrid threats.
“The Frontline is Everywhere”
Read about the growing threat of Russia’s malign influence efforts – and the movement to combat them.
Welcome to IWPR’s Frontline Update, your go-to source to hear from journalists and local voices at the front lines of conflict.
THE BIG PICTURE
The new head of the UK’s overseas intelligence agency this week dedicated her first public speech to warning that foreign informational manipulation now means that “the frontline is everywhere”.
Highlighting Russia’s massive use of disinformation, Blaise Metreweli said, “The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement.”
Nowhere is this more relevant than in Ukraine, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.
VOICES FROM THE FRONTLINE
“We have been dealing with this in Poland for many years, and the adversary's activity is increasing right now,” Kamil Basaj, president of Poland’s INFO OPS Polska Foundation think tank, told a recent IWPR conference in Chisinau that brought civil society and media from across the region together to learn from Moldova’s success in countering Russia’s massive destabilisation efforts around crucial September 2025 elections.
Anastasiia Romaniuk, an analyst at the Ukrainian Civil Network OPORA, described Ukraine’s vulnerability to Russian informational manipulation alongside its military onslaught.
“In Ukraine… we have been more concentrated on debunking, on trying to predict what the next attack is going to be, how to defend ourselves, so we're one step behind the aggressor,” she said.
“Institutions still work with the logic of ten years ago, but the speed and style of attacks have changed,” said Olga Guțuțui, team lead for Moldova at International Media Support. “We can’t counter disinformation alone. It’s not enough to have watchdogs. We need coordination - media, civic actors, public authorities.”
WHY IT MATTERS
As awareness grows of the impact of Russia’s hybrid hostile influence strategies, so does an understanding of how best to combat them. As shown so clearly in Moldova - where IWPR supports a civil society coordinating centre that played a vital role in linking with media to combat information interference during the recent elections – a unified approach that centres positive narratives can build trust and resilience.
“I always say that we shall never be able to ‘outfear’ Russia… because Russians have been nurturing the concept of fear and weaponising it for a very long time,” stressed George Melashvili, founder and president of the Europe-Georgia Institute.
However, he continued, “We shall always be able to counter Russia's narrative of fear with a narrative of a better tomorrow because Russia offers no positive ideas or narratives. It's always negative, it's always identifying cracks in society, widening them, creating these gaps, polarising society, and then instigating fear to control it.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
Information, as Metreweli said this week, is becoming “increasingly weaponised”.
In an age of such polarisation and propaganda, trustworthy journalism that engages meaningfully with the public is essential to resist malign influence operations.
Across the Eastern European region and beyond, IWPR continues to counter information manipulation by building trusted reporting networks, supporting media literacy and promoting credible content as a critical pillar of defence.
