DISINFORMATION

New enemy number one: European Union under the spotlight of Russian propaganda

Infosecurity.sk presents an overview of disinformation trends that have been on the rise in the last two weeks:

• The approaching 80th anniversary of the end of World War II is fueling a surge in propaganda narratives that glorify Russia. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico is beginning to help in the abuse of historical legacies and the build-up of Russia's image as an eternal fighter against fascism. Fico is also going to attend the celebrations in Moscow in May.
• The disinformers continue their verbal attacks on European armaments and military aid to Ukraine. They continue to accuse the European Union (EU) of militarisation and of failing to take a neutral position as a negotiating broker.
• In addition to the misguided accusations of chauvinism against Russia, which the EU is supposed to be committing because it refuses to give in to an aggressor, there are also the well-known narratives of gender ideology threatening traditional values. The presence of so-called neo-Marxist forces (and other phrases from the vocabulary of the American far-right) has been exploited in particular by far-right MEPs from Republika movement.
• Quite predictably, the foot-and-mouth epidemic that swept Slovakia around 20 March 2025 opened the gates to disinformation narratives working with fear and scapegoating. The situation has so far been used to attack the opposition and the media, but also to shape conspiracy theories about the EU or Ukraine. Some of them are just an updated version of what we already know from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ukraine over the horizon with tickets to Moscow booked

The turn of February and March in the Slovak information environment was marked by the development of the war in Ukraine and the topics of a possible ceasefire. However, the last few days rather served to reverberate some of the narratives around which the interest gradually faded away. There is no need to despair, they will surely return.

To begin with, Robert Fico's speech on the floor of the Slovak Parliament (video published on 28 March 2025) is likely to set up a communication picture that will dominate at least part of the disinformation scene over the next month. The celebration of the victory over fascism that Fico is planning to attend in Moscow on 9 May comes with the potential to instrumentalise a historical legacy for the glorification of today's Russia.

As the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, it is to be expected, therefore, that more and more eulogies will emerge that rely on the image of the eternal warrior against fascism. This has been central to Kremlin propaganda for several decades. It helps to legitimise Russian (Soviet) imperialist appetites and to label enemies. A possible dig at a victim of aggression is only ever welcome. PM Fico is also helping to perpetuate the pattern of Soviet propaganda in Slovakia, presenting his planned visit as "an absolutely dignified commemoration of who played the decisive role in World War II, and that was certainly the Soviet Union and present-day Russia".

Fico views the naming that the USSR was the initiator of World War II (because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Nazi Germany) as a rewriting of the past. He ignores the historical facts and rather puts the so-called Ukrainian violence against the Russian-speaking population in the Donbas in 2014 on the line. Fico has been adopting the repeatedly debunked narratives of Russian propaganda for a long time to legitimise the aggression of his dream geopolitical partner.

The PM acted similarly in another speech where, after weeks of addressing the gas transit issue, he again stressed that "without the Russian [gas] molecule , we are unable to compete with the world". Moreover, he fell for the Russian rhetoric on sanctions as well. Like the Russian president, the Slovak PM articulated that sanctions against Russia should at least be limited before peace talks. Combined with the statement that '"they do not have any significant impact on life in Russia"', this is quite a paradoxical view. Why the need to abolish something that is not working? It doesn't fit the logic, but it does fit the propaganda.

We will complete the journey along the trail of support for autocrats with Fico in Serbia. The Slovak PM dedicated a post on his Facebook page to the information that he had a telephone conversation with Serbian President A. Vucic. Fico compared the massive protests that have been taking place in Serbia in recent weeks to those organised in Slovakia. He again worked with the narrative that this was an attempt to "use the street to overturn the results of democratic free elections" and spoke without evidence of the presence of people linked to "the Maidan in Ukraine or Georgia". Fico is getting closer to the global creme de la creme of autocrats every day – by spreading propaganda and using rhetoric to hide his political failures behind conspiracy theories and the delegitimisation of the right to assembly.

Of course, the subject of the war in Ukraine has not completely disappeared from the information landscape. Tibor Gašpar, MP for the Fico’s SMER-SSD party, returned to the scaremongering about Slovakia being dragged into the war. This time, he renewed the narrative in the context of new European initiatives aimed at building defence capabilities and military aid to Ukraine. The SMER-SSD continuously rejects this and prefers peace without security guarantees for Ukraine as part of an inconclusive foreign policy towards all cardinal points of the world.

Milan Uhrik, the chairman of the far-right Republika movement, in turn disliked the presence of NATO troops on the eastern flank. Uhrík presents the decision of the Slovak parliament to send troops to the NATO multinational brigade in Latvia as "sending our troops to the Russian border": The policy of deterrence, which Uhrík also calls inciting "Slavs against Slavs", is said to be an obstacle to peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. This is a repetition of a scenario that has long echoed from the bowels of the disinformation scene - calls for endless concessions to the aggressor, with disinformationists relying on the lure of the word peace, which they serve up to their audience as needed.

European Union, new enemy number one?

The agents of information chaos have stuck to their set modus operandi in recent days and further multiplied their disinformation attacks on the EU. They have relied on references to military aid to Ukraine or evergreens talking about moral decadence and the presence of so-called gender ideologies.

There were multiple posts that pitted the interests of Ukraine and the EU against each other. For example, Eduard Chmelár, dubious analyst and former advisor to Fico, writes that he does not want a Europe that "militantly sides with one side of the war, which it is roaring into battle and sends hostile messages to the other side". In doing so, he criticises the EU's recent actions and, once again, deliberately forgets the cause of the war itself – the aggression of a hostile Russia. It is supposed to be mere "chauvinism against Russia". Let us just recall that in Russian political and media circles, it has already been voiced several times that European cities should be bombed or that a 'warning' nuclear bomb should be dropped. Interestingly, in these cases Chmelár was not bothered by the hostile messages.

The issue of security guarantees and the need for effective peace enforcement was not understood by another member of the Republika movement either. Jozef Viktorín summed it up in his post in a very direct way: "I don't see and don't want to see any meaningfulness in massive armaments. Similarly, I see no sense in supporting Ukraine and in supporting and extending sanctions on Russia". Just because someone doesn't want to see reality doesn't mean that reality isn't there or would be different. But Victorin is clear – the EU is supposed to adapt to the new dynamics between Russia and the US in a style that would only benefit Moscow. How? Well, stop aid to Ukraine and forget about the "descendants of the Bandera".

Another nationalist, Andrej Danko, in turn, in an interview with the disinformation media InfoVojna (InfoWar), scared that war fanatics (e.g. Macron or the EU) want to arm and "send civilians to the front". In a completely misguided, but in his own fashion and speech, the Slovak National Party leader tried to ridicule Macron and the "gay officials " in Brussels for not knowing what to do with weapons. According to Danko, Slovakia will always be "protected only by the Russians".

Let's take a closer look at this showcase of Andrej Danko's (il)logic – Europe is too soft, but it shouldn't actually arm itself, because only Russians, who are "helpfully" occupying Ukraine, will come to Slovakia's rescue anyway. In the words of MEP Ľuboš Blaha: "This is fantastic!" But it isn't. It is scary.

In addition to the war in Ukraine, we have also seen content that has focused on portraying the so-called moral and value decadence of the EU. Paradoxically, though no longer surprisingly, these messages of decadence have long been coming mainly from MEPs who ran for EU seats on false promises of halting such trends and protecting traditional values.

In this case, MEPs Milan Uhrík and Milan Mazurek (both from the far-right Republika) disliked the EU promotional videos. According to them "a junkie anti-Belarus video is to be shown in the official premises of the European Parliament". In reality, it is a video of a young civil activist calling for a response to climate change. For MEPs, this is a ridiculous matter; they are also trying to question the threat of far-right forces (no wonder, they belong to them) and are instead polemicising about the presence of 'left-wing neo-Marxist Brussels politics'. It is worth considering why, on the taxpayers' dime of European citizens, these MEPs devote themselves to making their own videos full of meaningless, hateful and often disinformative content.

We will continue to stick with this pair. Together, they boasted on Facebook about organising a meeting on the threats of transgenderism to women and children. In doing so, they lived up to the narrative of the fictitious threat to traditional values that the EU is supposed to bring. According to Uhrík , "Europe does not belong to rainbow progressives who want to re-operate young children and introduce 72 genders. Europe belongs to normal people".

We have had people labelled as abnormal here before in history. We have also had the framing of false enemies and the scapegoating of simmering tensions. We know how that turned out. We know that this is also why European integration was born. However, it is questionable, to say the least, why the very similar rhetoric to the Nazis can now be used arbitrarily by MEPs who hide their hatred behind the straw men of so-called gender ideology.

New epidemic, same old disinformation

The last two weeks in Slovakia have been dominated mainly by the spread of the infectious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Information about the first possible cases of this epidemic emerged around 20 March 2025. It is a highly infectious viral disease that affects livestock. As the outbreaks increase, not only are the estimates of economic damage increasing, but also the scope for exploiting the uncertainty and fears present.

That's why we took a look at the topic of FMD through Gerulata Juno's analytical tool. Using it, we analysed the most popular posts on Slovak Facebook that contained the keyword "foot-and-mouth disease" or "epidemic" ("slintačka, "krívačka" or "epidémia"). We excluded from the list those posts that did not contain problematic narratives. We then evaluated the posts based on the total number of interactions (the sum of all reactions, comments and shares).

The post with the most interactions belongs to the chairman of the far-right People's Party Our Slovakia. Marián Kotleba called to public attention with a video in which he conspiratorially refers to foot-and-mouth disease as a purpose-built pandemic, even using the name COVID-25. He compares the disease, which infects cattle, with the pandemic of a new coronavirus. As with it, Kotleba works scaremongering with narratives of a worldwide conspiracy and a global effort to gain control over the people. Why through cows and in Slovakia? Kotleba responds with his favourite mRNA vaccines, or muses that the UN and Agenda 2030 are behind the drive to slaughter Slovak cattle. While the Agenda 2030 is not compulsory and it is difficult to determine why prospective clandestine elites would start by slaughtering beef in Slovakia, it suits Kotleba's agenda. Why? It's elusive, many people don't know it and it can be used to scaremonger. The perfect straw man for people like Kotleba who occasionally try to resuscitate their political life from beyond the grave.

In a second post published on Robert Fico's page, the prime minister, in his popular "What didn't make it to the press conference" video column, informed his Facebook audience about the extent of the epidemic. In addition to relevant information, he also waded into the murky waters of his rhetoric and used the opportunity for yet another attack on the opposition and the media. The latter are said to be "sensationalists, spreading lies and scaremongering". The prime minister called on them to respect the government's actions and to "show respect for the people who have not stopped for a minute for many days". That would be fine too, if that were the case and if Fico had not sensationalized the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago. We are not making this up, Fico even continues this theme in his video, saying that he is "an open opponent of vaccination against COVID with various experimental vaccines". So let's break it down – Fico has taken himself out of the political gravedigger's shovel on the subject of the pandemic, criticizing every government move and scaring the public with unverified information, conspiracy theories and spreading hatred against his opponents. Today, quite hypocritically, he is using the epidemic to further ground the opposition and the media for criticising the failure to handle the situation so far. And this is mostly unadulterated hoaxes and disinformation. You can make your own opinion.

The third post, in turn, was published by Anna Belousovová. The former politician and nationalist returns us to the conspiratorial chaos with her content. Unlike Kotleba, however, at least she does not go back to the past and lashes out at targets that are well known and easy for Slovaks to demonise in the last few years. According to Belousovová, it is no coincidence that foot-and-mouth disease is spreading precisely on the territory of Slovakia and Hungary. The politician, who ran as an MEP for the far-right Republika party back in 2024, is working with the scenario that this is the revenge of the EU, which wants to retaliate against Bratislava and Budapest for their disobedience. Supposedly "nothing teaches a man to obey like a HUNGER". She presents a highly manipulative and evidence-free reality in which the extermination of cattle is being planned in order to increase Slovakia's food dependency. The culprits? The EU or Ukraine! The reason? Belousova's "information about biological laboratories in Ukraine" has "surfaced in her memory". What a coincidence that she should have stumbled into the waters of Russian propaganda, which also seeks to legitimise its aggression in this way.

The next post in the sequence belongs to Robert Fico. This is a recording of a press conference where the prime minister once again linked reporting on the epidemic with attacks on the opposition and the media. Not that this is surprising, but one might begin to think that this is gradually becoming Fico's favourite discipline. The prime minister has once again rejected any media sensationalism (the normal media coverage of government actions and their possible shortcomings), "cow experts from the opposition " (it's hard to identify who he means by this, but it probably doesn't matter) or denigration of the government's work. Just to remind you again, when in 2020 the government of Igor Matovič reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic, Fico did not let his political opponents off the hook. He questioned every government move and gambled with public health with his rhetoric. Today, with the FMD epidemic, he is flaunting the presence of veterinarians and experts. Actually, the very community that he was constantly attacking before and making a public enemy of. For the record, Fico still supports Peter Kotlár, who is leading the 'investigation' into the anti-pandemic measures taken during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Slovak prime minister remains unconcerned about Kotlár's unscientific conclusions that the public was to be vaccinated with vaccines designed to modify genetics. Fico is thus quite hypocritically straddling the line between the world of science and the world of non-factual fabrications. Paradoxically, when it comes to protecting livestock, he works with experts; when it comes to protecting people's health, he sends experts into the clutches of the social media mobs.

The last post in the series was published by Miroslav Heredoš. Thus, we alternate between the prime minister's ramblings and the ramblings of the rank and file members of the disinformation scene. Heredoš, like Belousovová, is working with the narrative that foot-and-mouth is the EU's doing. It is supposed to be about "liquidating and weakening farmers in the Union" and "making the EU market even more dependent on the MERCOSUR agreement". Again, it is no coincidence that the virus has appeared in Hungary. Heredoš argues that it is supposed to "show all the signs of a controlled EU operation". For his conspiracy theory, he traditionally offers no evidence, working with what he has – impressions, pseudo-science and time-tested labels of enemies. The reader has to rely on the fact that Heredoš, as a former chef and unsuccessful politician on far-right party ballots, has sufficient education and the correct information. It is just a shame that this is not the case.

Project Infosecurity.sk organized by Adapt Institute, which is supported by the Prague office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, continuously monitors the activities of both Slovak and foreign disinformation actors, but focuses mainly on the former. The project activities are built upon daily monitoring of emerging disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories in the online information space. This approach allows the analysts to identify disinformation posts and narratives that resonated with the public the most, as well as to find out where they originated, and how they spread and evolved on social media. The report takes the form of a bi-weekly summary of arising trends in the spread of malicious information content online. Based on that, Infosecurity.sk can inform the public about emerging and current trends in the field of disinformation, manipulation, and propaganda.