In the fourth year of its war against Ukraine, Moscow continues to pummel the country’s infrastructure with missiles and drones, leaving thousands without electricity and heating. While these ‘terror attacks on the energy grid’, in the words of HR/VP Kaja Kallas, continue, the Kremlin is simultaneously waging its hybrid war on the EU: targeting critical infrastructure, launching drone incursions and conducting massive disinformation campaigns.
Moscow’s hybrid warfare is testing European resolve once again. While the EU has agreed to end all Russian gas imports by 2027, it continues to face a surge in energy and climate-related disinformation. In parallel with its support for ‘winterisation’ – the process of preparing critical infrastructure for severe winter conditions – and the defence of Kyiv’s energy grid, Europe must also fight back in the information space. It is essential for Europe to seize the narrative to protect its citizens from energy-linked disinformation.
The physical and hybrid context
Russia’s energy disinformation forms part of a broader strategy that weaponises the energy sector for both physical and hybrid attacks.
In Ukraine it has relentlessly and brutally targeted energy infrastructure and generation capacity. Since the start of the war and up until October 2025, Ukraine has lost around 50% of its generation capacity through destruction and occupation. Russia shows no sign of changing strategy with attacks in late November hitting targets including LNG tankers, energy generation facilities and substations in the vicinity of nuclear power stations.
These physical attacks against Ukraine exist in parallel to a broader hybrid war against the EU. Russia’s shadow fleet is increasingly used not only to transport oil but also to spy on and attack European energy infrastructure. On 6 October, Finnish authorities confronted the Scanlark, a Russian shadow fleet vessel which had been previously detained by German authorities for sending out drones to spy on a military base, as it anchored 3km away from the nuclear power station at Olkiluoto. When German authorities boarded it, the ship was found to have surveillance equipment onboard considered ‘atypical’ for such a ship. Such findings mirror those of the Eagle S, another shadow fleet vessel which severed a major electricity interconnector in December 2024, (although a Finnish court was unable to prove criminal intent) or the Boracay which was boarded by French authorities in October 2025 on suspicion of launching drones at military facilities.
Pipelines and propaganda: a long-term strategy
The weaponisation of energy and information has long been central to Russia’s hybrid warfare toolbox. Recently, gas prices have hit an 18 month low, and the question is no longer whether Russia will use energy as leverage but how material pressures on energy supply and prices will be reinforced through information manipulation and interference (FIMI). The challenge here is to anticipate and counter the narratives that will accompany these efforts. Unless policymakers and societies are prepared on both fronts, Europe is facing a new phase of hybrid confrontation in which energy disinformation is part of a broader strategy to destabilise democracies from within.
Implementing the clean energy transition, while simultaneously decoupling European energy systems from Russian gas by 2027, comes at a cost and some in the EU are resisting. Russia has been able to exploit these societal frictions with targeted disinformation campaigns: blaming EU governments’ policies for rising prices and natural hazards while fuelling climate scepticism and extremist movements. Recent examples across Europe illustrate how these dynamics play out.
The weaponisation of energy and information has long been central to Russia’s hybrid warfare toolbox.
When the Baltic states disconnected from the Russian energy grid in February 2025, Moscow’s disinformation campaigns sought to undermine confidence in the transition by claiming that desynchronisation would trigger shortages and soaring prices.
Similar tactics occurred in Poland and Czechia as they worked to build energy independence after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Both countries moved to diversify supplies and the Kremlin sought to discredit these efforts by portraying them as harmful to the economy or the environment – while simultaneously carrying out cyberattacks on critical energy infrastructure. In Poland, disinformation targeted the cost and effectiveness of projects like the Baltic Pipe and LNG terminals. In Czechia, the government’s decision to stop importing nuclear fuel from Russia for the Temelín and Dukovany power stations prompted a Russian disinformation campaign casting doubt on new nuclear expansion and promoting the notion that reliance on Russian gas was unavoidable.
In Western Europe, Russian hostile state activity emerges as a key amplifier of energy and climate-related disinformation, especially during electoral periods, with Moscow’s proxies flooding social media with energy disinformation content aligning with far-right and anti-EU positions. These narratives claim that Germany’s energy transition will harm the country’s economy, criticise EU climate policy in France on the basis of false allegations, and have stoked climate scepticism in the Netherlands. This summer, after the EU adopted its 18th package of sanctions targeting Russian oil, Russian disinformation targeted the EU’s Green Deal.
At the EU’s borders, Moldova has served as a testing ground for Moscow’s playbook since 2022. Russia has exploited Chisinau’s energy dependence to fuel narratives that rising energy prices and the cost-of-living crisis stem from the country’s EU accession path.
Fighting back
The EU and its Member States should counter Russian energy-related disinformation with a dedicated, coordinated approach.
Firstly, on the operational level, by integrating strategic communications into resilience planning for key energy infrastructure. EU institutions and governments should work with energy authorities in Member States to invest in long-term strategic communications, notably through sustained pre-bunking campaigns that anticipate and neutralise common falsehoods about supply, price and dependency before they take hold in public debate. They should also leverage networks of fact-checkers – for example the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) as proposed by the Commission under the Democracy Shield – to establish countermeasures that can rebut energy-related disinformation as soon as it emerges.
Secondly, on a strategic level, Member States should break decisively with Russian fossil exports and communicate this shift through a positive narrative. The myth of cheap Russian gas endures even while cheaper forms of energy are widely available. The strongest card the EU can play is to prove that energy independence, powered by an electrified economy and locally generated energy, is the most effective antidote to Russian interference in the energy system.
