This campaign focuses on disinformation tied to Russian maneuvers in the war in Ukraine, with intelligence services detecting more than 40,000 messages. It finds its strongest audience among deniers in Spain. Police disinformation experts note a steady, heavy presence of Russian propaganda across related industries during the pandemic. There, opposition to lockdowns, masks on public streets, and vaccines created a receptive climate for conspiratorial narratives.
Russian-inspired messages that evoke fear, destabilize, or predict disaster are poured into Telegram channels. These conversations, born of the pandemic, present themselves as acts of resistance while spreading far-right viewpoints.
“They weren’t going to waste the social mass they catalyzed during the pandemic”, a police source explains. Since February, the content has shifted toward a pro-Russian orientation.
“Ukraine already a colony United States of America”—this claim continued to circulate on VK messaging and even appeared on TV channels like RT this week. Disinformation campaigns repeatedly reference the United States rather than the European Union. One of the most common lines in the Russian narrative asserts that nuclear weapons were used against people by the United States. This slogan often appears alongside less provable phrases such as, “Russia never started a war” or “Russia did not attack any country.”
Generally, disinformation tries to paint any government decision supporting Ukraine or NATO as alien to the will of the people, driven by hidden financial interests or occult forces. By juxtaposing inflation with military aid to Ukraine, it creates a broad suspicion toward institutions, according to an intelligence officer from the Armed Forces. The result is a fragile belief system that distrusts official channels and credibility.
The fabric of this rhetoric is a thin rain of arguments designed to craft a broader story: the democratic system is a sham, a cover for hidden powers that erode freedom and leave citizens unprotected. A channel reading this Wednesday claimed Europeans do not want to die of hunger or cold because of the puppet Zelensky and the totalitarian impositions of the globalist EU, accompanying footage of French demonstrations by workers in distress.
nuclear fear
The source notes that such messages aim to strengthen readers’ confirmation bias—heightening fear among the already anxious and amplifying it for those who are most vulnerable to fearmongering.
Within the Ukrainian conflict, the real fear centers on a possible nuclear war. Public attention to this issue creates a fertile ground for misrepresentation. The Department of Homeland Security, along with Moncloa’s advisory body, is examining recent confusing news items as part of a disinformation division and the gradual erosion of social networks. There are reports of megaphone-style warnings about a nuclear attack that turned out to be unrelated to the war, explained in some outlets as part of replacing alarm systems at nuclear plants rather than a forecast of imminent danger.
Russian disinformation is not solely aimed at persuading or destabilizing Spanish society. There is also a domestic line, sources confirm, that unites Putin supporters and weakens rivals within Russia. An atmosphere of threat is cultivated among Russians living in Spain. In Alicante and Madrid, reports mention the creation of a legal aid service for the Russian community, a move interpreted by some as part of an orchestrated effort to counter discrimination against Slavic people. Analysts caution that such services can be deployed to magnify tensions and create a sense of organized hostility.
These dynamics are tied to a broader strategy: leveraging fear to fracture cohesion and widen fractures along national lines. The current landscape shows a complicated web of messaging that travels across platforms and borders, aiming to influence opinions and destabilize political solidarity.