Europe Faces Critical Challenge in Combating New Wave of Disinformation

Russia and China Forge Information Alliance Targeting European Elections

Russia and China have established a sophisticated information alliance that threatens to undermine the integrity of Europe’s upcoming 2026 electoral cycle. Last month’s meeting between Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Hangzhou formalized coordination across information operations, synchronizing narrative control, digital regulation, and technological leverage within the media domain.

This partnership, built on a 2015 bilateral agreement and accelerated through joint working groups since 2022, now operates across cyber, space, and AI domains—directly challenging Europe’s open information system at its most vulnerable points.

The alliance represents the culmination of a decade-long progression. What began as limited cybersecurity dialogue has evolved into structured coordination on media, data governance, and now AI-enabled influence operations. For Moscow and Beijing, the cognitive domain has become as deeply embedded in national security strategy as any kinetic capability, while Europe continues treating information warfare as primarily a fact-checking problem rather than the systematic, strategic threat it has become.

Their objective is clear: to help bring pro-Russian, anti-Western, and anti-democratic voices into mainstream Western discourse. This strategy aims not just to undermine Euro-Atlantic unity and support for Ukraine but to erode political will to confront either regime.

The timing is significant as right-wing parties once considered fringe now top polls across Europe’s major capitals—London, Paris, and Berlin. While these gains stem from multiple factors including economic anxiety and immigration concerns, Russian and Chinese information operations systematically amplify these fissures, accelerating polarization through algorithmic momentum to anti-establishment narratives that serve their strategic interests.

Today’s threat is qualitatively different from Cold War information warfare. Algorithmic amplification generates millions of impressions within days, whereas Soviet dezinformatsiya required years to take effect. Democratic erosion now occurs within electoral cycles rather than generational timescales, making the information environment fundamentally more vulnerable to manipulation at unprecedented speed and scale.

China’s Strategic Calculations

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi revealed Beijing’s strategic calculus in July 2025 when he told Europe’s top diplomat that Russia’s defeat would lead the US to focus entirely on China. For Beijing, Russia serves as a strategic buffer that diverts Western resources and applies pressure on the West from Europe to the Pacific.

Information operations provide both nations with low-cost, low-risk tools to influence democratic processes without crossing kinetic thresholds that would trigger decisive Western responses. This approach aligns perfectly with China’s “security-first” doctrine under Xi Jinping and the “three warfares” framework—media, psychological, and legal—which complements the Kremlin’s information warfare doctrine.

China’s role has evolved from passive observer to active participant in Russia’s multi-layered campaign against European security. Beijing is actively learning from and replicating Russian-style information warfare techniques, including decentralized disinformation networks, AI-generated conspiracy content, and fake local news sites targeting Japan and Taiwan.

The implications extend beyond politics. Russia-China information operations target European defense industries, renewable energy investments, and technology sectors, undermining investor confidence and market stability. Chinese platforms’ role in Russian operations raises corporate governance questions for executives at ByteDance, Tencent, and Weibo, who face stark choices between compliance with Western regulations and their access to Chinese markets.

Three Domains of Convergence

The Sino-Russian information alignment operates within broader hybrid warfare coordination across three key strategic domains: cyber, space, and AI.

In the cyber domain, ENISA, the EU’s cyber agency, assessed that Russian and Chinese state-backed intrusions were jointly responsible for the overwhelming majority of attacks against EU public institutions last year. This reflects deliberate coordination through institutionalized channels, with nearly every EU member state experiencing Russia (47%) or China (43%) as the source of attributed intrusions.

In space, Russia increasingly relies on Chinese space-based intelligence to compensate for its aging satellite fleet and sanctions impacts. Chinese intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and Synthetic-Aperture Radar satellites reportedly provide Russia with higher-resolution imagery and faster battlefield evaluation. Ukrainian units have spotted Chinese satellites passing over during major Russian strike waves, raising concerns that China’s space capabilities directly enhance the Kremlin’s targeting and strike planning.

In the AI domain, Russia and China established a joint Expert Council on AI governance and standards in November 2025, followed two weeks later by formal consultations on military applications of AI. This partnership combines China’s scalable, low-cost AI architectures with Russia’s programming talent and battlefield data from Ukraine, enabling automated bot networks and localized disinformation at scale.

Narrative Convergence on Ukraine

Social media platforms have become frontline battlegrounds for this cognitive alliance. Chinese platforms like TikTok, with 200 million European users, and Weibo amplify pro-Russian narratives through algorithmic design and lax moderation. A major Russian campaign exploited TikTok’s algorithm to demoralize Ukrainian society with “peace at any cost” and anti-mobilization content.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chinese state media, diplomats, and online proxies have amplified Russian narratives, from blaming NATO for escalation to framing Western sanctions as self-defeating. Chinese media outlets and official statements increasingly use Russia’s terminology of “conflict” or “crisis” while avoiding the word “invasion.”

These campaigns succeed by manipulating authentic or semi-authentic content to create false impressions of public sentiment, as seen in Romania’s and Poland’s elections. Evidence from the 2024 European Parliament elections showed Russia-linked operations targeting audiences in France and Germany to promote polarizing narratives on migration, energy, and Ukraine.

Europe’s Inadequate Response

While Europe has implemented measures like the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation and the 2024 Digital Services Act, these responses were designed for isolated incidents rather than systematic, state-coordinated activity spanning platforms. The Code relies heavily on voluntary cooperation, which has proven inconsistent when platforms face pressure from the Chinese market or Russian obfuscation tactics.

The regulatory approach primarily addresses content moderation rather than the broader cognitive manipulation enabled by algorithmic amplification and cross-platform coordination. Europe is essentially bringing regulatory tools to what has become a national security threat operating at internet speed and platform scale.

A Path Forward

European leadership must recognize information warfare as a strategic, systemic, tier-one national security threat. Three parallel actions are urgently needed.

First, Europe must establish strategic red lines in the information domain, explicitly signaling that systematic information manipulation targeting elections or social stability constitutes a violation of sovereignty and will trigger predetermined diplomatic and economic responses.

Second, Europe must institutionalize cognitive resilience as a permanent mission. The recently announced European Centre for Democratic Resilience is a welcome step, but Europe needs a standing architecture to detect, counter, and deter foreign information operations within a common operational framework.

Finally, Europe must impose strategic costs and strengthen deterrence through robust attribution mechanisms, public exposure of state-linked operations, and coordinated responses including targeted sanctions, asset freezes, visa bans, and technology export restrictions.

The Sino-Russian information partnership is institutionalized, resourced, and operationally integrated across multiple domains. Europe faces a binary choice: institutionalize cognitive defense at the same level or accept gradual erosion of democratic cohesion and strategic autonomy. The 2026 electoral cycle will test whether Europe treats information warfare as a nuisance or an existential challenge.