European Centre for Strategies and Transformation

🇵🇱⚠️ A flare on a football terrace, a patrol in pseudo-uniforms, a Ukrainian flag torn down in public — each may appear to be an isolated provocation. Taken together, they reveal how radical nationalism can turn stadium culture, historical memory and political resentment into an infrastructure of hostile influence.

In its new analysis, the examines how Polish football-ultra and far-right milieus can amplify narratives without necessarily receiving direct instructions from .

The real danger lies in convergence: when local actors begin creating precisely the distrust, polarisation and anti-Ukrainian hostility that Russian operations are designed to exploit.

https://ecst-eu.org/when-%e2%80%9cpatriotism%e2%80%9d-becomes-an-influence-vector-polish-far-right-ultras-anti-ukrainian-sentiment-and-russia%e2%80%99s-fimi-playbook/

🇩🇪 Germany has strong institutions, a powerful economy, allies, defence funding and democratic resilience. Yet this is precisely why it has become such an important target for hybrid operations.

Sabotage, espionage, cyberattacks, disinformation, pressure on infrastructure and attempts to shape public attitudes are not isolated episodes. They are part of a wider struggle over Europe’s ability to act quickly, confidently and coherently. ⚠️

In the new ECST analysis, we examine how hostile actors are testing the German system — and where the line lies between democratic caution and dangerous delay.

📌 Read the full ECST analysis to understand what is at stake for Germany — and for Europe’s wider resilience:

https://ecst-eu.org/the-german-conversion-gap-how-hybrid-actors-exploit-the-time-between-capacity-and-action/



Photo by Cezary Piwowarski / Wikimedia Commons

🧠 Propaganda is dangerous not only when people believe it. It is dangerous when people grow too tired to resist it.

That is why we are especially honoured to share a new article by Professor Tony Meehan, marking the beginning of our cooperation with him.

In “Russia’s Propaganda System and Europe’s Information Battlefield”, prepared with research support from Julia Martens, Research Team Lead at the Centre, Professor Meehan looks at how Russia uses victimhood, fear and false “defence” narratives to weaken Europe’s clarity and resolve:
https://ecst-eu.org/russias-propaganda-system-and-europes-information-battlefield/

This is not just about media manipulation. It is about the struggle for truth, attention and democratic resilience.

🙏 We sincerely thank Professor Meehan for his trust, expertise and contribution to our work.

📄 New analytical brief | Russia’s Information and Disinformation Network in Europe

Russia’s information operations in Europe have shifted from messaging to infrastructure.

Our new brief maps how Moscow’s network operates across proxy media, cloned Western outlets, Telegram channels, platform amplification, AI-generated avatars and AI-facing content designed to shape the information environment itself.

🔎 The analysis covers the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, the Baltic States and Denmark, with a monitoring window from October 2024 to April 2026.

📌 Key finding: Europe does not lack instruments. The DSA, sanctions regime and institutional expertise already exist. The central challenge is whether Europe has the political will to use them coherently and in time.

Read the full brief below 👇:
https://ecst-eu.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/brief_russian-information-network-in-europe-1.pdf

🧭 Traditional values can hold communities together. But in , the same language can be captured, distorted and turned into a tool of foreign interference.

In our new ECST article, we examine how appeals to family, faith, nation and morality are used to fuel fear, polarisation and distrust — and what democratic societies can do to protect both their institutions and the values themselves.

📌 Read the full piece from European Centre for Strategies and Transformations: https://ecst-eu.org/the-capture-of-tradition-how-traditional-values-are-turned-into-instruments-of-hybrid-war/

📉Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund offers a strong assessment of Russia’s deteriorating economic outlook. She is right that sanctions, isolation, demographic losses, inflation, high interest rates and technological constraints are weakening Russia’s medium- and long-term prospects. The structural picture is indeed one of degradation.

🛢️However, the oil windfall should not be reduced to a mere “breather”. Even if higher oil prices do not restore Russia’s growth potential, they can still improve external balances, support budget revenues, ease pressure on reserves and help preserve short-term macroeconomic stability. In that sense, the effect may be limited for development, but significant for the regime’s room for manoeuvre.

⚖️This is the key nuance: Russia can be structurally weaker and still more financially comfortable in the short run. Sanctions and isolation are eroding its future, but commodity revenues can slow the pressure, cushion adjustment and buy time. The issue is therefore not whether Russia’s long-term prospects have worsened — they have — but whether current oil revenues give Moscow more resilience than the word “breather” suggests.

Russia 'lost standing’ despite ‘a breather’ from higher oil prices, IMF chief says While Russia has emerged as one of the very few winners from the recent disruptions to the global oil market amid the Iran war, this is not enough to offset the hit of sanctions and isolation, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told Euronews.

🌍 Europe’s security landscape is changing in ways that are not always immediately visible.

⚓ Damaged undersea infrastructure
🚢 Suspicious maritime activity
🛩️ Drone incidents near civilian airports
🔥 Proxy sabotage
💻 Cyber disruption

Each case may look separate. Together, they point to a wider grey-zone challenge: pressure below the threshold of open conflict, but with real consequences for resilience, deterrence and public security.

🔎 Our latest analysis looks at why Europe needs to see the pattern — not only the incidents:
https://ecst-eu.org/shadow-war-the-threats-europe-underestimates/

🤖🗳️AI is changing politics — not only by faking what politicians say, but by shaping what voters feel.

The European Centre for Strategies and Transformations has analysed cases from , the , , India, and : AI-generated campaign images, cloned voices, synthetic political presence, manipulated celebrity endorsements, “gemoy” rebranding and AI-made patriotic avatars promoting Polexit narratives.

The image is no longer just decoration. It is becoming the argument.

Read the full article about this👇:
https://ecst-eu.org/the-new-synthetic-campaign-how-ai-is-changing-political-communication/

🔐 Crypto privacy is not the problem. Unaccountable opacity is.

Public blockchains are not anonymous — they can expose financial behaviour with brutal precision. But privacy tools can also be abused by ransomware groups, sanctions evaders and hostile cyber networks.

So the real question is not whether crypto needs privacy.

It does.

The question is whether the industry can build accountable privacy: protecting legitimate users, businesses and civil society — without creating a safe corridor for illicit finance.

⚖️ Financial confidentiality
🕵️ Compliance and investigation
🌐 National security
💸 Abuse risks

👉 Read the full analysis: https://ecst-eu.org/privacy-enhancing-technologies-in-the-crypto-industry-between-financial-confidentiality-compliance-and-abuse-risks/

🛩️ Drone incidents around the are no longer just isolated airspace episodes.

❓They raise a practical question for NATO’s eastern flank: how should allied states respond when a UAV threat is real, but attribution is still unclear?

⚠️Recent cases in , , and show how quickly such incidents can affect civilian safety, airport operations, military readiness and public communication.

👨‍💼At ECST, we examine why stray and unidentified drones are becoming a test of NATO’s airspace resilience — and why crisis decisions may need to be made before full political clarity is available.

🔗 Learn more about this: https://ecst-eu.org/stray-drones-hard-choices-natos-baltic-airspace-problem/