When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin didn't just mobilise tanks and missiles. It unleashed subtle yet powerful ideological contamination. Over years of intensifying illiberalism under Vladimir Putin, Moscow has mastered the art of framing raw geopolitical aggression as something defensive, moral, and ultimately sacred. Within Russia, the war is not sold as a choice, but as a tragic, heroic necessity to safeguard national sovereignty and fight resurrecting fascism.
But the true danger of this narrative does not stop at Russia's borders. This rhetoric is like a virus, it adapts, it mutates, and it finds (willing) hosts inside Europe. As we prepare to launch the Horizon Europe-funded VIRUS project (Violence by Russia in Ukraine: Examining the Implications of Its Narrative Justification in Russia and Europe) at the University of Padova this June, the urgency of mapping this narrative contagion has never been more acute.
European cohesion is under what we define as a 'narrative siege'. The threat is no longer just external cyber warfare or top-down disinformation campaigns like the one run by Russia Today. It is the organic absorption of these ideas into the European domestic fabric.
Read the full article at Focus Europe.