A Russian influence operation has shifted its target towards France and Germany as Europe has increased support for Ukraine.
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Storm-1516 has spread 34 false narratives about France and Germany since January 2025, which have accumulated 274 million views only on X, according to NewsGuard. An analysis published by CEPA shows how artificial intelligence, content migration between platforms, and regulatory differences are used to amplify messages against European support for Ukraine.
A Russian influence operation known as Storm-1516 has increasingly focused its activities on France and Germany after European states took on a larger share of support for Ukraine. According to an investigation by NewsGuard cited in an analysis published by the Center for European Policy Analysis, the network has launched at least 34 false narratives targeting the two countries since January 2025, spread through approximately 175,000 posts and articles and viewed 274 million times only on X.
In short
Storm-1516 has spread 34 false narratives targeting France and Germany since January 2025, according to NewsGuard, and the materials have accumulated 274 million views only on X.
The messages primarily aim to present support for Ukraine as a burden on European economies, a cost to citizens, and a factor that would bring the continent closer to war.
The CEPA analysis describes the use of artificial intelligence tools for producing and amplifying content, in a context where the EU already identifies AI as an integrated component of Russian and Chinese information manipulation operations.
Content can migrate quickly between platforms with different surveillance regimes: X is a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act, while Telegram does not have the same designation and the same additional obligations.
The authors and institutions cited do not claim that regulation can solve the problem on its own, and the CEPA analysis also emphasizes independent journalism, fact-checking, and media literacy.
Storm-1516 is an influence operation attributed by researchers to the Russian propaganda ecosystem and linked to the activities of the former Internet Research Agency. The NewsGuard analysis published in February 2026 shows that as American financial and military support for Ukraine has decreased, the operation has shifted a significant part of its attention to European allies who have become more relevant for supporting Kyiv. France and Germany have been specifically targeted through narratives designed to affect public support for continued aid.
The 34 false narratives identified by NewsGuard between January 2025 and February 2026 circulated in approximately 175,000 posts and articles and generated 274 million views only on X. The intensity increased in the second half of 2025, when NewsGuard identified 18 narratives that accumulated 147 million views, compared to 12 narratives and 97 million views in the first half of the year.
The messages differ in form but pursue a common theme: support for Ukraine would affect the living standards of Europeans, consume resources that should be used within member states, and increase the risk of direct European involvement in war. France and Germany are important targets precisely because they have become central actors in supporting Ukraine and because their decisions have a significant influence on European policy.
The analysis published by CEPA places this development in a broader context, in which the production of false or manipulative content can be accelerated by artificial intelligence tools. The European External Action Service has found in its own reports that AI is already integrated into Russian and Chinese manipulation and information interference operations, being used for the rapid and large-scale production of images, video recordings, and other forms of content.
CEPA also cites the use of artificial intelligence models developed in China by actors associated with Russian influence operations, presenting the phenomenon as part of a broader digital cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. The material does not support the existence of a unique Russian-Chinese structure coordinating all these campaigns, and the described examples must be differentiated between Russian operations, Chinese technological systems, and narratives that may overlap.
An additional difficulty for European authorities is that the same narrative can circulate successively on platforms under different surveillance regimes. X is designated as a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act and must assess and mitigate the systemic risks associated with its service, including those that may affect civic processes and public debate.
The European Commission fined X 120 million euros in December 2025 for violating transparency obligations regarding verification labels, the ad library, and researchers' access to public data. In January 2026, the Commission opened a new investigation into the functionalities of Grok and expanded the examination of X's recommendation systems, and in July accepted a corrective action plan for some of the transparency issues identified.
Telegram is in a different situation. The service is not designated by the Commission as a very large online platform and, therefore, is not subject to the additional set of obligations and direct oversight that the DSA applies to platforms exceeding the European threshold for this category. The CEPA analysis argues that this difference allows narratives to migrate quickly from spaces with stronger oversight to services where European intervention tools are different.
The issue is also relevant for candidate states in the Western Balkans, where European legislation on digital platforms does not yet apply in the same way as in a member state. The analysis shows that the messages used to reduce support for Ukraine can be adapted to the local audience and transformed into arguments against the credibility of the enlargement process, suggesting that a Union that would tire of supporting Kyiv might not keep its promises to candidate states.
CEPA uses the parliamentary elections in Hungary in April 2026 as an example of the limits of such campaigns. The electoral campaign included AI-generated content, synthetic images, activity on TikTok, X, and Telegram, and messages built around the costs of support for Ukraine. The election result was, however, a clear victory for Tisza, Péter Magyar's party, which obtained 141 of the 199 mandates, ending 16 years of Fidesz governance.
The analysis does not establish that external influence messages determined the electoral behavior of Hungarian voters nor that the result can be explained by the success or failure of a single information campaign. The case is used to support the idea that exposure to manipulative content does not automatically produce the desired political effect and that the reaction of media institutions, civil society, and political actors matters in the public's ability to assess such messages.
The author argues that platform regulation is necessary but insufficient in the absence of a quicker response in the public space. Independent journalism, fact-checking, media literacy, and the ability of political leaders to explain in concrete terms why European states support Ukraine are presented as complementary tools to legal and technical measures.
For the European Union, the issue thus exceeds the removal of a post or sanctioning a platform. Modern influence operations can combine the cheap production of materials with AI, networks of accounts, websites that imitate legitimate publications, and the rapid movement of the same messages between services and jurisdictions. A false narrative can appear on one platform, be reproduced on another, and later return to public debate in the form of information seemingly independent of the original source.
The case of Storm-1516 also shows how the targets of influence operations can change with the evolution of international politics. When the United States represented the main supporter of Ukraine, a significant part of the messages targeted the American audience; as European states took on a larger share of support, France and Germany became central targets of the campaign.
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