AI chatbots citing Russian propaganda sourced from EU-sanctioned outlet

By Estelle Nilsson-Julien

Published on 27/07/2026 - EURONEWS

AI chatbots are citing Russia propaganda from EU-sanctioned outlets, researchers say, raising questions about how hybrid warfare is expanding to influence large language models (LLMs).

Mainstream large language models (LLMs) such as Google Gemini have reportedly cited pro-Russian propaganda from an EU-sanctioned outlet when generating responses, including claims that Ukraine is using the bodies of dead soldiers in meat products.

There are also signs that foreign actors engaged in hybrid information warfare activities, such as Russia, could make use of the growing industry of GEO (generative engine optimisation), which aims to influence the information received by LLMs, according to a new reportpublished by researchers from UK-based cross-party think tank Demos, shared exclusively with Euronews's fact-checking team, The Cube.

Researchers selected 50 propaganda narratives from ten articles published by the Foundation to Battle Injustice or "r-FBI". Founded in 2021, the organisation presents itself as an NGO that works to expose discrimination, censorship and investigate cases of persecution.

But in fact, it's a fake human rights organisation founded in 2021 by the deceased former leader of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The organisation is sanctioned by both the US and EU.

The claims researchers selected were "lurid", according to Carl Miller, co-founder of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM), a research unit established by the Demos think tank.

"They are not claims that belong in any sort of mainstream discourse," Miller said. "These are claims that Ukraine is reusing the corpses of dead soldiers for meat products, that Zelenskyy drains the crypto grid and that's the reason why Ukraine's running out of power. We found LLMs treat them as being legitimate parts of a debate."

To conduct their research, researchers tested five mainstream LLMs — operated by xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and Mistral AI — and drafted prompts in three languages (English, German and French) based on propaganda narratives featured in R-FBI articles.

How LLMs amplified Russian propaganda

Researchers found that all five LLMs cited the r-FBI as a favourable source.

A total of 16.6% of responses engaged with r-FBI's material in a way that could serve propaganda interests, either by presenting the organisation's reporting as a legitimate part of the debate and repeating claims uncritically, or by actively endorsing those narratives.

Meanwhile, 30.9% of responses addressed the underlying topic mentioned in the prompt, but failed to surface the sanctioned-source context at all, thereby leaving users unaware that the response used a designated influence asset as a source.

A further 52% of answers rejected or debunked false claims in some way.

When researchers questioned OpenAI's GPT 4.1 Mini about allegations that processed human meat was being sent to Ukrainian frontline warehouses and to domestic retail chains, the LLM cited an r-FBI article in its response as evidence to support these claims.

When questioned about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's cryptomining ventures — a recurrent claim pushed by pro-Kremlin actors — French AI company Mistral's Mistral Small 3.2 LLM supported these claims, again citing an alleged months-long investigation by r-FBI.

In its response, Mistral Small 3.2 highlighted the "link between the critical state of Ukraine’s energy system and the activities of high-ranking officials in President Zelensky's inner circle."

The battle for generative engine optimisation

As more and more individuals turn to chatbots over traditional search engines or news outlets, a rapidly growing industry has emerged, which aims to influence how AI models gather their sources.

This practice is also known as generative engine optimisation. Based on the foundations of search engine optimisation (SEO) — a field developed to influence results on traditional search platforms — GEO works to influence the results generated by AI platforms.

"New information is being created specifically for LLMs, but in this case, it's new content that's being offered for brands and marketing, or the editing of content that is already online using user forums like Reddit, Quora and Wikipedia," Hannah Perry, director of Demos Digital, the think tank’s digital policy hub, told us.

For researchers, there is a real risk that actors conducting hybrid foreign interference operations could hone in on these tactics and exploit a regulatory grey zone.

"Our research is not saying that GEO companies are carrying out information warfare on behalf of states," Miller said. "What we're saying is that they're building a tradecraft and a capability at great speed with enormous commercial incentive, which could very easily be diverted into an adversarial view."

"In this particular case, the AI mistakenly believes that the Foundation to Battle Injustice is a legitimate human rights NGO," she added. "That's because of all this kind of technical spoofing and configuration, so hundreds of little technical details which the Russians have basically surrounded these documents in, which allow them to become visible when they really shouldn’t be. That is information warfare."

The Cube contacted the LLM tech companies cited in the research, but did not receive a response at the time of publication from xAI and Google, which respectively develop Grok 4.20 and Gemini 2.5 Flash.

A spokesperson for Mistral, founded by Frenchman Arthur Mensch and widely recognised as Europe's leading generative AI company, told us that it takes the fight against disinformation extremely seriously and that it ensures continuous investment in advanced detection and prevention capabilities.

Mistral also distinguished the raw models handled in Demos' study and Vibe Work. Mistral said that while raw models allow users freedom over prompts and settings, Vibe Work operates with a ready-to-use agent which has built-in reasoning and context scanning.

OpenAI told us that the study used a model which has now been retired and was only available through its API (used by developers) rather than the publicly available ChatGPT. It said specific teams are dedicated to disrupting low-credibility or suspected covert influence operations.

A source familiar with Anthropic — the US company which created the Claude AI chatbot — said sophisticated enforcement systems are in place to mitigate the spread of misinformation.

They said that a threat intelligence team works to detect and disrupt foreign influence operations to mitigate the spread of disinformation, adding that their LLM was programmed to present a wide range of perspectives, especially when a source may present a specific viewpoint or agenda.

 

Russia has a desertion problem. Ukraine has a manpower crisis

Russia is taking losses that are five to eight times higher than Ukraine, but thanks to the differences in the size of their populations, it is Ukraine that is proportionally losing men faster. The manpower crisis is made worse as desertion from the AFU is ten-times higher than Russia's. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin July 12, 2026

The armies fighting Europe's biggest land war since 1945 are both losing soldiers without firing a shot. But while Russia has a growing desertion problem, Ukraine is in the midst of a growing manpower crisis.

Russian authorities have convicted an estimated 28,000 cases of soldiers abandoning their units since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion, Meduza reports in an investigation into desertion from the Russian army. The total number of Russian deserters is unclear, but according to analysis by the military intelligence group Frontelligence that if current trends continue, up to 70,000 Russian soldiers could desert during 2026.Yet, the losses are being largely offset by a steady flow of highly paid volunteers signing military contracts every month.

Ukraine, by contrast, has opened hundreds of thousands of criminal investigations into soldiers desertions or failing to return from leave, NV reported in November.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian law enforcement has registered more than 310,000 criminal cases related to “unauthorized absence from a military unit or place of service” (AWOL) and desertion — most of them in the first 10 months of 2025, NV reported. Between January 2022 and October 2025, 255,000 cases were opened for AWOL and another 56,200 for desertion, totalling 311,327 criminal proceedings, the Prosecutor General’s Office told NV in a written response.

The stark difference reflects the contrasting recruitment models adopted by the two countries more than three years into the war.

Russia hunts deserters — and sends them back

According to Meduza, more than 28,000 Russian servicemen had been convicted of going AWOL by May 2025, with the total now believed to exceed 30,000. The report describes a military justice system that increasingly seeks not to imprison deserters but to return them to combat. Even sending them to prison means most convicts will end up back on the front line as Russia has emptied its prisons in its search for combat soldiers.

Beginning in the summer of 2022, the Wagner Group headed by the late Evgeny Prigozhin, recruited tens of thousands of convicts directly from Russian prisons, promising pardons after six months at the front. Following Prigozhin's failed mutiny and death in 2023, the Ministry of Defence took over the programme. By most estimates, well over 150,000 prisoners have been recruited since the invasion began, sharply reducing Russia's prison population. According to Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), the number of inmates has fallen from around 420,000 before the war to below 300,000, the lowest level in modern Russian history. Officials have acknowledged that many penal colonies have been left with only a fraction of their previous populations. Having largely exhausted the prison pool, the Kremlin has continued to offer enormously generous signing bonuses and high military salaries to attract civilian volunteers, but according to recent reports it is now failing to recruit enough fresh troops to cover losses at the frontline.

That has refocused the military authorities on cracking down on deserters. Soldiers who disappear from their units — known colloquially as sochintsy, after the Russian military abbreviation SOCh for unauthorised absence — face a growing nationwide manhunt. Recent cases included authorities in Russia's Belgorod region declaring 13 soldiers wanted after they fled almost simultaneously.

While going AWOL can theoretically carry prison sentences of up to 10 years, or 15 years in aggravated desertion cases, Meduza reports that the military's preferred solution is often simply to recapture soldiers and send them back to the front, increasingly into assault units where casualties are highest.

Rights organisation Peace Plea, which advises Russian soldiers seeking to avoid combat, says forced redeployment has increased significantly since 2024. Many soldiers now regard imprisonment as preferable to another deployment into some of the war's bloodiest sectors.

Ukraine's numbers are vastly larger

The scale of Ukraine's desertion problem is substantially greater. Before the figures were classified late last year, Ukrainian prosecutors had opened approximately 311,000 criminal cases for desertion and unauthorised absence since the start of the invasion, with more than half of those cases opened since the beginning of 2025.

Official court statistics indicate that well over 100,000 AWOL cases have already reached the judicial system, while Ukrainian MPs had previously disclosed that desertions had exceeded 100,000 by late 2024.

Famously, the problem was best illustrated by the collapse of Ukraine's elite 155th Mechanised Brigade, who were sent to France for advanced training and equipment, receiving some of the most advanced Western weapons supplied to Kyiv. This is an elite battalion and were used to spearhead the Kursk incursion in 2024. Embarrassingly, hundreds of them deserted as soon as they arrived in France. Up to 1,700 soldiers from the brigade eventually went AWOL before the unit had fired a shot. Around 50 disappeared during training in France, while hundreds more vanished on their way back to Ukraine, despite receiving extensive Nato instruction and modern equipment. The brigade was eventually broken up and its surviving personnel redistributed among other formations.

Volunteers versus conscripts

The contrast largely reflects how each army recruits. Russians volunteer and are well paid for their commitment. Ukrainians are violently pressganged into service against their will.

Russia offers signing bonuses that in some regions exceed the equivalent of $40,000 – multiples of the average annual salary –

alongside monthly salaries several times the national average. As IntelliNews reported, a Siberian bus driver can earn double his usual salary just driving a truck behind the lines. Western intelligence estimates Russia continues to recruit roughly 25,000 to 35,000 volunteers every month, broadly enough to replace, though not necessarily exceed, its exceptionally heavy battlefield losses.

Ukraine closed the borders to the exit of military aged men as soon as the year started and introduced compulsory service. Unable to attract sufficient volunteers, Kyiv increasingly relies on the “busification” of eligible men enforced by the much-hated Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centres (TCKs).

Videos circulating daily on Ukrainian social media show recruitment officers forcibly detaining military-aged men in the streets before loading them into minibuses. The policy has become one of the country's most divisive wartime issues.

Last week tensions came to a head in Lviv, traditionally one of Ukraine's most patriotic cities, when an anti-mobilisation protest escalated into a riot after recruitment officers allegedly assaulted a civilian. Protesters overturned and then smashed a TCK vehicle before police restored order. Embarrassingly, it later emerged that several of the rioters were active duty servicemen that had deserted and were hiding in Lviv, as far from the frontline as it is possible to be inside Ukraine.

A shrinking pool of manpower

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is facing a growing manpower crisis. While the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) is currently losing a reported 1,000 men a day as it tries to capture the town of Kostiantynivka and the remain parts of Donbas it doesn’t’ already control, as IntelliNews estimated, the AFU is losing somewhere between 100 and 300 men a day.

The absolute number of Ukraine’s losses is less, but proportionally Ukraine is losing more than Russia. Russia has roughly five-times more people than Ukraine, assuming a Ukrainian population of 29mn, which many experts say is on the high side.

However, this ratio is made worse by the fact that more than 5.7mn Ukrainians remain abroad after fleeing the war. According to expert estimates, of the pool of people left in Ukraine, half of them are now pensioners. Others are exempt due to health reasons and single parents or parents with more than three children are also exempt. In addition, large numbers of eligible men still in the country have gone into hiding to avoid serving. In real terms that suggests that Ukraine’s pool of possible recruits could be a tenth of Russia’s.

Russia is also facing a manpower shortage and as IntelliNews reported, tensions between the doves and the hawks in the Kremlin to end the war soon is growing. The doves want to call it a day here and freeze the conflict on the current line of contact. The hawks want Russian President Vladimir Putin to call a second general mobilisation and flood the Donbas with hundreds of thousands of fresh recruits to bring the war to a speedy end. Rumours are currently swirling that a new mobilisation will be called after this September’s parliamentary election. Previously, Putin held a partial mobilisation in September 2022, recruiting some 300,000 men to meet a manpower shortage then.

Russian forces continue making slow but persistent advances across the Donetsk region while Ukraine struggles to rotate exhausted frontline units that, in many cases, have been fighting continuously for months. Despite the recent talk of a “turning point” in the war, more sober Ukrainian reports admit that the AFR continues to make slow but consistent progress.

As the war enters its fifth year, battlefield success may depend less on who possesses the better weapons than on which country can continue persuading its citizens to keep fighting.

 

Moscow uses 'Russian Houses' in Africa to lure recruits into war in Ukraine, investigation shows

Copyright AP Photo

By Sasha Vakulina & Aleksandar Brezar

Published on 18/06/2026 - EURONEWS

Ukrainian military intelligence has revealed that Russia's expanding network of "Russian Houses" functions as a recruitment pipeline for its war, luring young Africans with promises of education and jobs before some are sent to the front lines or into drone factories.

Moscow is waging “a war for the minds” of Africans by rolling out a hybrid network of so-called "Russian Houses" in addition to arms supplies and direct military aid to military juntas in Africa, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) revealed in its recent investigation.

According to earlier research, “Russian Houses” in Africa, targeting above all the youth, are already operating or opening in at least 22 countries, as part of Russia’s strategy to consolidate its influence on the continent.

HUR now revealed that Moscow is currently planning to open centres of influence in eight African countries: Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Mali, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe.

This is being carried out through Russia's federal cooperation agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, in collaboration with the Centre for Public Diplomacy (CPD), an organisation founded in 2024 with the stated aim of expanding the existing network, specifically targeting Africa.

The CPD’s official mission is to convey "accurate" information about Russia to Africans.

Brussels has sanctioned Rossotrudnichestvo, freezing its assets in July 2022 for spreading disinformation tied to the invasion of Ukraine.

Yet it has continued to expand its African footprint despite the penalties, operating more than 85 official branches abroad.

Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service said Russia allocated $1.85 billion (€1.6bn) for foreign propaganda operations in its 2026 federal budget, a 54% increase on the previous year — a sum exceeding the entire annual education budgets of several West African states.

What goes on inside Russian Houses in Africa?

According to available information, the centres screen Soviet and Russian films, often on patriotic themes, and distribute ideologically vetted literature.

They also teach the Russian language and coach young people on how to move to Russia as students or workers.

Organisers sell an image of a "happy Russia,” but according to HUR, in practice that promise often curdles: some recruits sign contracts with the Russian military and are sent straight to the deadliest parts of the front lines in Ukraine.

In 2025, then-head of Rossotrudnichestvo Yevgeny Primakov Jr announced that the government would fund more than 5,000 African students to attend university in Russia.

The educational opportunity is often the most salient motivator for locals to engage with the organisation.

Most strikingly, in January of this year, Primakov Jr himself publicly admitted that a "well-known African private military company" — widely understood to mean Wagner Group, rebranded as Africa Corps following the death of founder Yevgeny Prigozhin — had been directly involved in establishing Russian Houses in Mali and the Central African Republic, and that some of its members had since moved into formal Russian state positions.

Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation described the admission as confirmation that the centres function as elements of hybrid operations rather than neutral cultural institutions.

FILE: Supporters of Captain Ibrahim Traore parade wave a Russian flag in the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 2 October 2022 AP Photo

The Bangui Russian House in the Central African Republic is run by Dmitry Sytyi, a figure who also controls Wagner's operations in the country and reportedly uses the centre as a logistics hub for the group's gold, diamond and timber trafficking, according to media reports.

The expansion of Russian Houses has closely followed the rise of pro-Russian military juntas, particularly in West Africa: centres opened in Mali in 2022, Burkina Faso in January 2024 and Niger in October 2024, all following coups in which Wagner or its successor forces became the new regimes' primary security providers.

Wagner and Africa Corps, which is controlled by the Russian Ministry of Defence, are among the most ruthless armed groups on the continent and are directly implicated in mass civilian killings and other war crimes.

In April, three human rights organisations — TRIAL International, the Pan-African Lawyers Union and the International Federation for Human Rights — filed the first case of its kind before the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, seeking to hold Mali's government responsible for hosting and failing to prevent abuses by Wagner and its successor force.

Run by friends of Putin

Journalist and former Duma member Primakov Jr is the grandson of former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who also served as head of the KGB First Chief Directorate, overseeing its transition to Moscow's foreign intelligence service, the SVR.

The elder Primakov was a staunch advocate of the theory of Russian supremacy and one of the main architects of the Kremlin's idea of multilateralism, a thin ideological veneer meant to act as a cover to Moscow's aspirations for control over former Soviet republics and elsewhere and a key cog of Russian President Vladimir Putin's influence machine abroad.

FILE: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to attend a civil funeral for former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, in Moscow's House of the Unions, 29 June 2015 AP Photo

Primakov Jr has direct ties to Putin. He served as one of Putin's official "trusted representatives" during the 2018 presidential campaign and was elected to the Duma that same year on the ruling United Russia party's list before being appointed chief of Rossotrudnichestvo in 2020.

He is under EU, UK, Canadian and Australian sanctions for his role in promoting the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories.

Putin dismissed Primakov Jr as head of Rossotrudnichestvo in April of this year, replacing him with Igor Chaika, son of Russia's former prosecutor general Yuri Chaika and a figure separately sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2022 for developing plans, reportedly with the assistance of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, to destabilise Moldova's pro-Western government, according to a report by think tank CEPA.

Igor Chaika and his elder brother Artem were the subject of Alexei Navalny's corruption investigation.

In a 2015 film, Navalny's foundation found that the two had used their father's position to amass fortunes through rigged state contracts, the seizure of a state-owned shipping company whose director was later found dead, and undisclosed property abroad, including villas in Switzerland and Greece.

Artem was placed under US Magnitsky Act sanctions in 2017 for using his father's position to "dishonestly obtain state property and state contracts." Yuri Chaika, who served as prosecutor general for 17 years, was never removed from office over the allegations and later joined Russia's Security Council as Putin's presidential envoy.

Recruiting Africans into Russian military

According to a report by the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Russian information warfare has expanded significantly in the Global South since 2022, particularly in Africa.

DIIS said Russia brands itself in Africa as an anti-colonial partner to sway political elites and publics through “regime survival packages," which include weapons, political advisors and influence campaigns

“Between June and September 2025, the number of Russian military service promotion posts aimed at foreigners on the platform VK increased from 621 to 4,600. This meant that by mid-2025, one in three contract announcements targeted foreigners, compared to only 7% in 2024," the DIIS report said.

According to the Washington-based Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, through a shadowy network of online recruiters, Russia has quietly assembled a pipeline funnelling thousands of Africans from nearly every country on the continent into the front lines and factories supporting Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.

“These were not the destinations the young Africans thought they had signed up for. Many were looking for jobs, training, or opportunities abroad. Drawn by promises of life-changing salaries, they instead found themselves trapped in a war far from their home countries," the Africa Centre said.

A child walks past a mobile recruiting centre in St Petersburg with a poster promoting contract military service in the African Corps, 12 June 2026 AP Photo

Misled by Moscow’s recruiters, some have been pressed into military service and forced at gunpoint toward the front lines, where casualty rates are exceptionally high, according to the Africa Centre.

Majority Leader of the Kenya National Assembly Kimani Ichung’wah testified in February that once they arrive in Russia, these recruits are “basically just given a gun to go and die."

Others have been trapped in drone factories, like the Russian Alabuga Special Economic Zone (ASEZ) in Tatarstan, a republic in the east-central part of European Russia.

ASEZ is a public-private industrial complex known first and foremost for producing Shahed-136 drones for Russia’s military.

DIIS revealed that Russian recruitment is also increasingly targeting young African women — Nigerian students in particular — to work in drone factories, including Alabuga, supporting Russia’s military war machine.

'Ideological weapon of slow-acting harm'

Ukraine’s military intelligence stated that with more Russian Houses opening in Africa, Moscow’s recruitment on the continent will only intensify.

The final goal, according to HUR, is “to cultivate an entire generation of ideologically loyal Africans in order to conceal its colonial exploitation of their countries while using people as a cheap source of military manpower”.

FILE: A supporter of Niger's ruling junta holds a placard in the colours of the Russian flag at the start of a protest in Niamey, Niger, 3 August 2023 AP Photo

“An illustrative example is Sudan, where Kremlin-controlled groups polluted water resources with mercury due to predatory artisanal gold mining,” HUR said, pointing out that “pollution of this scale cannot be eliminated for years – it is an ecological weapon of slow-acting harm."

“The local population in this scheme is viewed solely as cheap labour – both at Russian enterprises within African countries, and at the factories in Russia itself, where Africans end up after ‘training’ in the 'Russian Houses.'”

How many Africans have already been recruited?

In April, HUR revealed the Kremlin's plans to recruit at least 18,500 foreign mercenaries to fight against Ukraine by the end of 2026.

Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation stated that Russian Houses serve as key hubs within this shadow recruitment infrastructure.

In June, Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that at least 2,965 citizens from 36 African countries had taken part in combat on Russia's side.

Recruitment of Africans escalated in 2024, according to the Africa Centre, which stated that African recruits appear to be assigned to especially expendable battlefield roles.

This was backed by the testimonies of survivors and evidence found by investigators, both of whom showed that Africans were commonly used in high-risk assaults.

FILE: A Ukrainian soldier goes along a street in the frontline town of Kostyantynivka, the site of heavy battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, 28 Nov AP Photo

Not every expansion attempt has succeeded. In September 2024, authorities in Chad arrested Russian operatives immediately after the opening ceremony of a planned Russian House in N'Djamena, having already detained two others at the airport days earlier, a rare instance of government intervention against Russia's attempts to harden its presence.

Separately, an investigation published in Nigerian outlet TheCable identified 272 Nigerian nationals who had enlisted through associated channels, of whom 55 were reported dead. Russian Ambassador to Nigeria Andrey Podyelyshev dismissed reports of recruitment through these channels as "misleading" in February.

Several African states, including Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, have repeatedly demanded explanations from Moscow and called for an end to the illegal recruitment of their citizens, but the Russian foreign ministry has continued to ignore those demands**.**

When asked about Russia’s deceptive recruitment of Africans for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, Peskov denied involvement, stating in May that “We are unaware of any such cases.”

Colonialism in Africa

Anticolonial fraud: The Kremlin in Africa

Monday 8 June 2026, by Sasha Fokina

Among the many concepts coined by the Cold War, campism remains strikingly relevant in today’s increasingly polarized world. It frames global politics as a division between two camps: the imperialist West, seen as the primary source of global exploitation and instability, and its supposed anti-imperialist opponents. The term describes a tendency to support any force opposing Western imperialism and its allies — regardless of how reactionary, exploitative, or even imperialist those forces may be.

In the case of Russia, the resurgence of this mindset became especially visible after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As Moscow launched its assault on an independent country and proceeded to systematically commit colonial crimes both on the front lines and in occupied territories, some observers have chosen to overlook these atrocities, arguing instead that NATO’s expansion left the Kremlin with no alternative.

Amid the Kremlin’s growing suppression of indigenous peoples’ rights within Russia and the intensifying persecution of opposition voices — including those on the left — campist logic separates geopolitics from internal social relations. In contemporary Russia, however, this divide is even more pronounced. Despite its claims to speak on behalf of the Global South, Moscow extends its imperial ambitions far beyond its borders, reaching not only into neighbouring independent states such as Ukraine and Georgia but further afield.

In its quest for an anti-imperialist image, Russia increasingly targets African countries, which continue to be shaped by competition among global and regional powers. An alliance with an anti-Western Moscow is often framed as a path toward resisting the expansionist ambitions of former colonial powers, as well as securing stability and economic growth. Yet the reality of Russian involvement in Africa indicates something else: anticolonial rhetoric alone is insufficient to justify campism — or to deliver genuine liberation.
Cold War histories

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union, driven by its rivalry with the capitalist bloc, played a notable role in decolonization movements across many African countries. It provided key resources for liberation struggles: weapons, economic support, and ideology. At the same time, tens of thousands of students from across Africa received education in the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries, further strengthening the appeal and influence of the Soviet project.

After the collapse of the USSR, Moscow’s presence in Africa declined sharply as the new Russian state faced internal crises. From the mid-2000s into the 2010s, the Kremlin gradually began to rebuild ties with previous partners on the continent. Its return to Africa, however, became a prominent part of public discourse in 2019, when Russia hosted its first Russia–Africa Forum in Sochi. There, President Vladimir Putin declared the opening of a “new page” in Russian–African relations. Western media captured the moment with headlines such as “Putin just took a victory lap in the Middle East. Now he’s turning to Africa” and “The Russia-Africa summit, Moscow’s show of ambition in the region”. Amid growing isolation in the Global North and a desire to be perceived as a real superpower, the Kremlin began actively promoting its influence in the Global South, particularly in Africa.

Conventional hard-power tools

Since 2019, the scope of Russia’s cooperation with African countries has noticeably expanded: Moscow has deepened its relations with historical partners and expanded its network among the new regimes facing regional and international isolation, as well as non-aligned regimes seeking to diversify their partnerships.

Economically speaking, Moscow’s presence in Africa remains limited — Russia simply does not have the capital to compete with other regional actors. While Russian media praised the historical maximum of the total trade value between Moscow and African countries which constituted almost $28 billion in 2025, for China and the EU this index exceeds $300 billion, while that of the U.S., UAE and India were over $100 billion each. But Russia has managed to carve out an economic niche for itself by exporting nuclear energy projects. As the demand for energy is growing along with the region’s population, Moscow is offering its own expertise, education for future personnel, and the nuclear fuel to run these long-term projects.

Another dimension of Russia’s strategic economic influence in the region concerns food security. In 2025, Agroexport, the Russian agency for agricultural exports, claimed that Moscow had become Africa’s largest grain supplier, accounting for a third of the continent’s wheat market. In total, Russia exports grain to around 40 African countries, with demand from Algeria, Libya, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Tanzania increasing significantly in recent years. Against the backdrop of disrupted supply chains and rising prices — driven in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as climate shocks and the lingering effects of the pandemic — some African governments have accused the Kremlin of exploiting this dependency for political leverage.

However, the backbone of Russia’s presence in the region is arms exports. In January Rosoboronexport — Russia’s agency for military sales — claimed that its exports to African countries reached the scale of the Cold War times, when the Soviet Union was responsible for 40% of supplies to the continent. One cannot be certain if this reflects the reality or rather wishful thinking by the Kremlin, given the limitations in Russia’s military exports capacities amid its war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Moscow remains the critical actor on the continent’s arms market. According to SIPRI, in 2020–2024, Russia accounted for 21% of African imports of major arms, putting it ahead of China (18%) and the U.S. (16%).

‘Military presence with a human face’

In addition to conventional arms exports, for years, Russia has supplied its African partners with the services of the private military company (PMC) Wagner. The so-called ‘Wagner Group’ has now been formally absorbed by the Russian Defense Ministry and rebranded as Africa Corps (perhaps a reference to the German “Afrikakorps” in World War 2), following the PMC’s founder’s, Evgeny Prigozhin, death in 2023.

A package deal from the Russian “military instructors” — the vague mercenary job description — includes not only the security services, but also political consulting on topics such as disinformation campaigns and staged protests, as well as the management of lucrative and extractivist contracts in an array of industries from gold and other minerals to lumber.

Case in point is the Central African Republic (CAR): its president Faustin-Archange Touadéra was the first African leader to openly welcome the Russian PMC as far back as 2018. Formally, the CAR leader invited “Russian instructors” to support the national army in its fight against local rebels. In reality, they became the guarantor of Touadéra’s own hold on power. For instance, they supported the 2023 constitutional referendum, the results of which allowed the president to remain in office without term limitations. Currently the “political advisors” in CAR are promoting a foreign agent law — the Kremlin’s signature repressive mechanism it has employed against its own opponents for 15 years and has exported to the friendly authoritarian regimes in decline. The Russian-backed organizations also conduct aggressive social media campaigns in the CAR, intimidating critics of the regime, with AFP sources [suggesting-https://www.barrons.com/news/central-african-court-bails-opposition-leader-7b4349c0] the Russian forces even track the president’s opponents with drones.

In reports from other countries that have experienced Russian military instructors’ presence, civilians have accused them of killings, torture and sexualized violence. Former Wagner Telegram channels are full of evidence of routine executions and desecration of corpses, especially in Mali. This is what Russian propaganda calls “military presence with a human face”.

On top of that, recent reports indicate that young African men who travel to Russia for education or what they believe to be well-paid civilian jobs are instead sent to the front lines in Ukraine. Moscow views them as a source of cheap labour, essential for sustaining its war effort. Often forced to sign contracts in a language they do not understand, thousands of men from at least 36 African countries are used as cannon fodder at the frontline. INPACT investigation identified over 1,400 Africans recruited by Russia, however, additional reports suggest higher numbers. Within months of arrival, over 300 are said to have been killed. Those who survive frequently receive no financial compensation, face racism from their commanders, and struggle to leave. With limited international scrutiny, the Kremlin has effectively built a transnational human trafficking network, a system of exploitation, capitalizing on the economic vulnerabilities of the very people it claims to support in their anti-colonial struggle.

Anticolonialism-washing

Such hybrid operations appear to be the perfect fit for the struggling autocracies among Moscow’s historical partners as well as the young regimes that find themselves limited in their choice of partners. For instance, the Sahelian juntas — the regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — heavily rely on anticolonial sentiments. Needless to say, those sentiments originate from the real grievances of the people against the centuries-long exploitation, with France still conducting years-long military operations in the region until recently. The young regimes appeal to this inequality and unfairness, refuse cooperation with the former metropoles. They commonly end up turning towards Russia.

The Kremlin first takes the opportunity to promote a fitting image. According to the Kremlin-disseminated conspiracy theories, the U.S. runs biological laboratories across the continent and Western companies produce deadly vaccines. The Kremlin appeals to the Global South by promoting BRICS as a project battling the American hegemony. Putin openly condemns the “shameful” history of western colonialism and consistently calls for creation of the Palestinian state.

Various propaganda outlets assist the Kremlin in spreading these narratives: Sputnik Africa, RT, TASS, as well as the recently established news agency African Initiative. Its content is translated into all the major languages spoken on the continent. The staff includes members from the former Wagner PMC network. African Initiative is headed by Artem Kureev. Reports suggest he is an operative of the Fifth Directorate dealing with the foreign affairs of the Russian internal intelligence agency (FSB).

In the countries where Russian influence is already quite strong, propaganda campaigns to shape the public opinion on the ground have been handed over to local organizations and opinion leaders. At the second Russia-Africa forum, the president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, praised Moscow’s support of African sovereignty and even compared the modern history of Russia with African countries by calling both “the forgotten peoples of the world”. On a lower-tier, a Russia-affiliated Ivorian NGO called Total Support for Vladimir Putin in Africa (SOTOVPOA) even launched an international prize in his name, honouring what the founder of the NGO called Putin’s “liberating act for Africa.” Furthermore, the African Initiative organizes press tours of the occupied Ukrainian territories, during which bloggers from Sahelian regimes discuss the “reconstructions of new regions” and receive training in conducting information campaigns.

Against campism

As outlined above, Russia’s presence in Africa has little to do with the liberation of local populations and is instead focused on sustaining partner regimes. War crimes, extractivism, and the reinforcement of autocratic rule point to the underlying motives behind the Kremlin’s return to the continent — motives that are not so different from those of other neocolonial powers.

Many questions remain: Is the pretend-anticolonialism, supported by propaganda efforts and disinformation campaigns, convincing anyone? Are the protests depicting crowds with the Russian and Wagner flags staged or is there genuine support for Russia in Africa? Do a majority of people recognize the influence Russia has on their own governments, elections, economies? The generalized sociological data provides limited information: the latest edition of the Afrobarometer study shows significant cross-country variation. In Mali, one of Moscow’s essential newer partners, the positive public perception of Russia’s economic and political influence increased from 56% in 2019–2021 to 88% in 2023–2025. Meanwhile, in Guinea — no stranger to Russia’s business activities — the positive opinion of Russian influence dropped from 63% to 49% in respective years. Simultaneously, an average positive perception of Russia in Africa (36%) is lower than that of China (62%), the U.S. (52%), EU (50%) or India (39%).

The results of the Kremlin’s fight to win hearts and minds on the ground remain inconsistent, although it is clear that some groups are benefiting from its presence. At the same time, Moscow appears to be taking competition of great-powers in the region seriously. This is evident in the growing number of the Kremlin’s soft power institutions (such as Russian Houses), its expanding security presence, and investments in long-term infrastructure projects.

In the global context, the Kremlin’s cynical instrumentalization of anti-colonial narratives — including its claimed efforts to “liberate” African societies — appears to have achieved limited but notable traction among segments of the left. Beyond Kremlin-affiliated propagandists, this position is echoed by anti-intellectualist commentators and online influencers, as well as whole political parties (such as the German DKP), who denounce Western imperialism while overlooking the anti-democratic and reactionary nature of its geopolitical rivals. In this framing, Russia’s activities in Africa are often invoked as evidence to support such views.

This logic is not only deeply Western-centric — within a campist framework, only the West is seen as possessing the agency to commit significant crimes — but also quite dangerous. It undermines progressive struggles against regimes that present themselves as opponents of the West, whether in Russia, Iran or Venezuela. Meanwhile, despite ostensibly belonging to opposing camps, conservative elites in both Russia and the United States alike continue to pursue overlapping interests, by scheming over their own fascist International and shaking hands in Alaska. In the current global system shaped by capital and enforced by states, only genuinely internationalist and anti-colonial movements grounded in solidarity with people across both “camps” offer a viable path toward the liberation of the exploited class.

22 April 2026

Source: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.

Attached documents

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• Sasha Fokina

  Sasha Fokina is a journalist and analyst focusing on anti-colonial struggles, wars, and autocracies across the Global South, as well as on feminist and migration issues.