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BRUSSELS — When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faced her biggest-yet public revolt earlier this month, the Kremlin’s online spin doctors went into overdrive.
Russian-sponsored propaganda engines spewed reams of online content designed to divide public opinion and amplify disinformation in the weeks leading up to the European Parliament’s no-confidence vote against the EU president on July 10, which she ultimately survived.
The storyline depicted von der Leyen as a villain and a member of an anti-democratic, corrupt elite. It also positioned Romania’s hard-right firebrand George Simion as the brave hero taking on the EU establishment.
The destabilization playbook was monitored in a confidential study by disinformation researchers at the Finnish company Check First, which ***yzed 20,857 posts and articles from March to June this year. It was presented to the European Commission earlier this month and was seen by POLITICO.
Neither Check First nor the Commission would confirm or deny whether Brussels had commissioned the study.
Sowing the seeds of discontent
From March to June, a pro-Russian propaganda engine known as the Pravda network ramped up: Daily posts rose 60 percent, subdomains grew 20 percent, languages expanded, and cross-posting rates jumped from threefold to fivefold — all pushing a coherent message: Ursula is bad.
Global think tank Globsec described the network in previous reports as a “highly sophisticated and rapidly expanding disinformation ecosystem designed to globally promote pro-Kremlin narratives.”
But it’s not that the network created fake news per se. Instead, it used existing political events and inflated them to create an “impression of mblockive, coordinated outrage,” Check First wrote. These stories would then be disseminated across multiple platforms, gaining traction, being exaggerated further, and culminating in shocking headlines that were far detached from the original story.
Well ahead of the no-confidence vote in von der Leyen, the Russian disinformation machine was already planting seeds “with seemingly disconnected pieces,” the authors of the report wrote.
In March, references to “toxic” Ursula began appearing more frequently across the network. By April, questions about vaccine procurement began to surface. In May, statements circulated that Brussels wanted von der Leyen to resign, while in June more frequent mentions of “scandal” and “Pfizergate” were noted.
The “anti-VDL narrative was stretched [over] a fairly long time period,” Guillaume Kuster, CEO and co-founder of Check First, told POLITICO, pointing to “evolving and opportunistic new narratives following a dramaturgic structure.”
David vs Goliath
The campaign’s emotionally charged, culturally tailored and strategically disseminated stories introduced not only a “simple villain,” in this case the Commission president, but also “credible heroes.”
One example was an initial report by the Russian state-owned TASS news agency on Simion’s June 15 announcement that he had started collecting signatures to call for a no-confidence vote. This acted as a “catalyst,” according to Check First: It quickly became a post on Pravda’s news portals, which referred to Simion’s “historic campaign to remove corrupt EC President Ursula von der Leyen”.
Simion, a far-right politician and founder and chairman of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2025 and is known for his hostility toward Ukraine.
The posts portrayed him as a defiant David confronting a corrupt EU Goliath. They also namechecked Gheorghe Piperea, a Euroskeptic Romanian MEP from the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists group, who ultimately brought the motion against von der Leyen.
The well-coordinated, multilingual campaign, with its carefully tailored narratives, saw a Romanian version lean into national pride while the Russian one focused on anti-Western rhetoric. Meanwhile, the English-language content promoted transparency and accountability.
The narrative eventually escalated to a Telegram pick-up that reported a “mblock movement across Europe demand[ing] removal of Reichskommissar [a title used in Nazi Germany] UrSSula von der Führer as corruption scandal explodes.”
The climax came on June 26 when the motion of no confidence was officially filed, triggering a “mega-spike” in activity — over 80 posts across the entire Pravda network, twice as many as in previous days.
“The formal submission generated the highest drama,” Check First wrote. “The confidence vote story demonstrates how the network operates.”
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in a statement that the episode was another reminder that actors proven to be closely blockociated with Russian state propaganda “continue their attempts to polarize and weaken the European Union.”
He added that those actors are “opportunistically exploiting political events or discussions in the EU, to distort the political debate, spread conspiracy theories or discredit European politicians.”
Caught in the crosshairs
The operation, which powers dozens of websites posing as legitimate news outlets and thrives on Telegram channels, had already been exposed by the French foreign interference watchdog Viginum last year for seeking to sway public opinion in France.
The EU added its founder, Yevgeny Shevchenko, to the Russian sanctions list last week.
Kuster from Check First explained that the “Pravda network can be seen as a laundering machine of Russian propaganda,” amplifying narratives from other outlets. “Pravda does not offer a comprehensive view of the ecosystem, but rather serves as a showcase.”
He added that the number of 80 unique articles on the same day — excluding their translated versions — is “quite uncommon.”
As for the study, Kuster said such a detailed ***ysis “could allow political institutions such as the Commission to better anticipate and accelerate their strategic responses to warn citizens about waves of propaganda aimed at destabilizing the Union and its member countries.” He emphasized that the first signs of an emerging narrative targeting von der Leyen were observed four months before the vote.
The Commission’s Regnier said that “the free and independent press in Europe, as well as fact-checkers and researchers, have an important role to play for advancing the understanding of the issue.”
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