Roman Kulchynskyi, editor-in-chief of Texty.org.ua, spoke about the resilience of democratic societies to Russian influence and the Kremlin’s information operations during the international conference “Actual Security Threats VI”, dedicated to key challenges to European security, countering Russian imperialism, and supporting Ukraine.
In total, the researchers examined more than 165,000 publications from 21 Czech websites that spread propagandistic and destructive content. 66% of the publications from these online outlets contained at least one propaganda narrative.
In total, 55 such narratives were identified across seven thematic groups: the war in Ukraine, Russia, the US, Europe, Czechia, Ukraine, and international events.
“We showed the systematic nature of the spread of Russian disinformation in Czechia and explained exactly how it spreads. It seems to me that Czechia lacks research on how Russian disinformation actually works in this country. I watched the audience’s reaction, and I think they were struck by the data we presented. It’s very good that people whose opinions are listened to heard this data,” noted Roman Kulchynskyi.
“Russian disinformation is an infrastructure that adapts its narratives to the local context. Our research shows that effective counteraction requires seeing the entire ecosystem of information attack dissemination. That is why, for the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, supporting such research is part of broader work to strengthen the resilience of democratic societies and to study Russia as a source of threats,” emphasized Yaryna Yasynevych, program director of the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation and co-author of the study.
Below are the key points from Roman Kulchynskyi’s presentation.
We analyzed a large volume of information to identify patterns that are difficult to notice when looking at individual global events. For several months, our journalists investigated how Russia spread its disinformation in Czechia throughout 2025.
We once again saw one important thing: Russian propaganda is not just individual stories about specific people — it is an entire infrastructure consisting of websites, Telegram channels, social media accounts, fake messages, and a number of mechanisms that work in interaction with one another.
We wanted not just to find isolated examples of disinformation, but to answer the question: does infrastructure exist in Czechia? If so, how does it work, and what is its scale?
Russian disinformation leaves traces on the internet similar to fingerprints. Russian propagandists do not rely on a single successful operation or story. They repeat the same narratives again and again, adapting them to the local context and slowly undermining trust.
The period of our study spans one year — from January 2025 to 2026, that is, from Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president to the parliamentary elections in Czechia. This makes it possible to track not just a single moment, but how information changes over time.
Which narratives the Kremlin spreads in Czechia
We found the following:
The Russian disinformation spreading in Czechia is not created in isolation.
Its stability is striking: the topics may change, the storylines may vary, but the core message always remains the same and is adapted for the Czech audience. If Russian propaganda in Czechia talks about the decline of the West, propagandists working on Czechia focus on the topics of migrants or the loss of Czech sovereignty.
The most repeated Russian narrative in Czechia is that Ukraine is losing. This is done to make citizens believe that supporting Ukraine is a futile effort.
At the beginning of 2025, Russian propaganda portrayed Donald Trump as a politician who would change the West’s policy toward Ukraine. But once it became clear that Trump would not force Ukraine to accept Russian terms, the tone changed very quickly, and we saw how Czech junk sites synchronously changed their attitude toward Trump as well.
The network of sources and the “information laundering” mechanism
One of the most interesting discoveries in our study emerged when we started looking at who these sites link to. By analyzing the links, it is easy to see that we are dealing with a network. More than half of these sites regularly used Russian sources; sometimes an external link leads to Russian state media or sources linked to Russian propaganda. Most often these are “Russia Today,” TASS, RIA, “Novosti,” and others — a particularly interesting source being “Anti-Spiegel.”
As for links on social media, the core of this infrastructure is the Russian messenger Telegram. We found links to Telegram channels in more than 18,000 cases, many of them posted by so-called Russian “war correspondents.” They are the primary source of many of the stories that made their way into the Czech information space.
But the most important thing is that we identified a mechanism that can be described as “information laundering.” It works very simply: first, a Russian state media outlet or a Russian Telegram channel publishes a certain piece of material. Then one of the Czech sites takes it as a source, translates it, and publishes it. After that, other Czech websites start reporting on it citing other Czech sites. Thus, after just a few steps, the Russian origin of the information disappears. To readers, it already looks like news that does not come from Russia, or like part of a general information campaign.
Sometimes the websites under our study linked to quality Ukrainian media. But the choice of articles is also very targeted — always material critical of the Ukrainian authorities, investigations, and so on. And they never translated articles about Ukrainian reforms, successful military operations, and the like.
Researchers’ conclusion
To sum up: when trying to counter hostile propaganda, attention should be focused on the system of production and dissemination of lies, not on individual fake news items.
The Russian system operating in the Czech information space is not random or spontaneous — on the contrary, it is clearly organized and highly adaptive.
