Euromaidan mosaic (Kyiv, 2013-2014). The European choice of Ukraine, a point of clash between national sovereignty and Russian sphere of influence, opens the contemporary chronology of hybrid warfare.
International politics
Russia and Western Democracies
Timeline of a hybrid war against the rule of law. A sequence of cases stretching from Euromaidan to the Baltics: how Moscow combines propaganda, energy pressure, cyber-attacks, espionage and opaque funding to erode democratic trust without necessarily declaring war.
This article organizes, as a chronology of cases, the relationship between Russia and Western democracies: hybrid warfare and its impact on the rule of law. The reading goes through Poland after the PiS, Hungary after the defeat of Orbán, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Voice of Europe, Doppelgänger, the Baltic countries and the pressure on critical infrastructure.
The reading distinguishes between direct interference, ideological affinities, researched funding, influence operations, and simple windows of opportunity that Moscow can exploit. That distinction is central: not every Eurosceptic or nationalist actor is a Russian agent, but it can produce functional effects to a Western fragmentation strategy.
Authored by Juan Tomás Jara Masson, with the collaboration of Agustín Cosso.
Article thesis
The relationship between Russia and Western democracies cannot be understood only as a military confrontation. From Euromaidan to the war in Ukraine, from Brexit to Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria and the Baltics, Moscow has combined propaganda, energy pressure, cyberattacks, espionage, opaque financing, media operations, sabotage and instrumentalization of internal fractures. The goal is not always to directly control a state: it is often enough to erode trust, divide societies and make democratic life suspicious.
The dilemma for the West is profound. Liberal democracies must protect elections, institutions, critical infrastructure, and public conversation. But they cannot do so by destroying what distinguishes them from authoritarian regimes: freedom of expression, pluralism, judicial guarantees, controls on power and respect for human dignity. Democratic defense requires firmness, but also republican limits.
How to read this timeline
The cases gathered do not have the same nature or the same degree of evidence. Some refer to operations documented by judicial or intelligence authorities; others to researched financing, political affinities, disinformation campaigns or vulnerabilities that external actors try to exploit. The continuity is not that all the episodes are identical, but that they reveal the same dispute: the capacity of democracies to sustain autonomy, public truth and the rule of law in the face of fragmentation strategies.
Editorial cartoon about the Russian geopolitical pressure that is projected on Ukraine, Europe and the United States.
1. Democracy, Rule of Law and Hybrid Warfare
Before going through the cases, it is advisable to set the conceptual framework. Robert Dahl thought of modern democracy as polyarchy, a regime that is sustained on four simultaneous conditions: effective participation — citizens can influence political decisions through elections and other mechanisms —, real political competition — parties and candidates genuinely dispute the support of the electorate —, freedom of expression — guaranteed opinion, assembly and press — and access to sufficient and verifiable information to decide. Democracy, then, is not reduced to the formal existence of elections; it requires institutional and communicational conditions that allow those elections to be free and meaningful.
The rule of law adds a decisive dimension. Tradition begins with Montesquieu, who in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) argued that only an effective division between the three powers — Legislative, Executive and Judicial — prevents any person or group from concentrating sufficient prerogatives to become a tyrant. Rousseau prolonged the discussion in *The Social Contract * (1762) with the idea of a political pact in which citizens delegate part of their natural freedom in exchange for the protection of their rights. The first German liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in thinkers such as Kant, Fichte and Wilhelm von Humboldt, articulated the subjection of public power to law as a guarantee of human dignity; the concrete expression "Rule of Law" (Rechtsstaat) is usually attributed to Robert von Mohl in a work of 1832, during the struggle against monarchical absolutism.
From that tradition decants a material conception of the Rule of Law that rests on four pillars: (a) the rule of law as an expression of the general will; (b) the separation of powers — Legislative, Executive and Judicial — as an organizational principle of the State; (c) equality and non-discrimination before the law; and (d) the proclamation and guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms that belong to all people equally. Judicial independence, a free press, and republican controls are not institutional trappings: they are conditions of a non-arbitrary political life.
Hybrid warfare operates precisely on the vulnerability of that opening. It does not always need tanks or territorial occupation; it can act through disinformation, political financing, cyberattacks, energy pressure, espionage, sabotage, algorithmic manipulation or exploitation of identity fractures. Their goal is not always to produce an immediate victory. It is often enough to produce distrust: for a society to doubt its choices, its judges, its means, its allies, its minorities and itself.
Mary Kaldor identified this turn some time ago in New and Old Wars: communication becomes a weapon of simultaneous legitimation and delegitimization, an instrument of war without formal declaration. Fareed Zakaria, in 1997, called “illiberal democracies” the formations that preserve the electoral façade but erode republican controls and individual guarantees from within — a phenomenon that the Czech think tank Kremlin Watch has been documenting since the middle of the last decade in its reports on the proliferation of Russian agents in European politics, disinformation campaigns, the theft of sensitive data and cyberattacks against democratic infrastructure.
That is why the central question is not only military. How do you defend a democracy without closing its pluralism? How do you combat a foreign operation without turning public debate into a space of censorship? How do you integrate minorities exposed to external propaganda without treating them as internal enemies? The answer, if it is to be democratic, must reinforce institutions and transparency without abandoning the freedom it claims to defend.
Vladimir Putin portrayed as an octopus on Europe (Blanes, 2018, with apologies to Fred W. Rose): an editorial metaphor of simultaneous influence and pressure on the continent.
2. Synthetic timeline of a strategy
Russian pressure on the West does not appear as a single isolated event. It unfolds as a sequence of episodes combining war, information, energy, domestic politics, minorities, social media, digital platforms, and critical infrastructure. The following timeline does not intend to exhaust all cases, but to order a continuity: from territorial coercion to information manipulation; from energy dependence to electronic warfare; from the crisis of the rule of law to the defense of democratic sovereignty.
Moment
Case
Hybrid modality
Reading for the Rule of Law
2013-2014
Euromaidan, Crimea and Donbas
Propaganda, political pressure, irregular warfare, anti-Western narrative.
The European election of Ukraine became the clash point between national sovereignty and Russian sphere of influence.
2015-2016
Brexit and US election
Misinformation, digital operations, polarisation amplification and trust erosion.
The dispute is no longer limited to Eastern Europe: it reaches electoral processes in consolidated democracies.
2017-2019
Poland, Hungary, Le Pen, AfD, Catalonia
Narrative or financial support to Eurosceptic actors, separatism and illiberal forces.
The EU's internal conflicts become opportunities for Moscow.
2020-2023
Pandemic, energy, INGE, Baltic countries
Health propaganda, energy dependency, reports on interference, pressure on Russian-speaking minorities.
Hybrid warfare becomes the subject of European institutional study.
2022
Large-scale invasion of Ukraine
Hybrid warfare escalates into conventional warfare without disappearing.
The conflict shows that propaganda, energy, and cyberattacks accompany the military field.
2024
Voice of Europe, European elections, Romania, Moldova, Doppelgänger
Media influences, opaque payments, TikTok/Telegram, vote buying, fake domains.
Electoral integrity is at the heart of democratic advocacy.
2025
Post-PiS Poland, Baltic synchronization, Bulgaria and espionage
Institutional reconstruction, energy independence, outsourced espionage networks.
Democratic resilience combines internal reforms and external security.
The boundary between military, technological and information security is becoming increasingly blurred.
3. 2013-2014: Ukraine, Euromaidan and the contemporary starting point
The first case that orders this chronology is Ukraine. The Euromaidan crisis, between late 2013 and early 2014, was not simply an internal protest or an isolated episode of geopolitical competition. It was the moment when Kyiv's European orientation clashed with the Russian will to preserve a zone of influence over the post-Soviet space. The refusal of the government of Viktor Yanukovych to sign an association agreement with the European Union, under strong pressure from Moscow, opened a crisis that ended up reconfiguring Ukrainian politics and European security.
The Russian narrative presented those mobilizations as a coup organized by the West and sustained by extremist groups. The propaganda of media such as Russia Today or Sputnik sought to delegitimize the citizen claim, reduce the complexity of Ukrainian society to an external conspiracy and then justify Russian intervention in Crimea and the Donbas. There appears a pattern that will be repeated in other cases: to transform a local political demand into proof of a Western aggression against Russia.
Ukraine also had a material strategic value: exit to the Black Sea, fertile lands, military infrastructure and geopolitical location. That is why hybrid warfare was not a substitute for conventional warfare, but its prelude. Crimea, the Donbas, propaganda, unrecognized armed actors, and diplomatic pressure showed that Moscow could combine instruments without openly declaring war in classical terms.
The large-scale invasion of 2022 did not eliminate that hybrid dimension. On the contrary: he integrated it into the military effort. Since then, the war has also been fought at the energy, financial, information, digital and symbolic levels. The Ukrainian battleground coexists with another less visible battleground: European public opinion, transatlantic cohesion, and the ability of democracies to sustain long-term political support.
Average wheat production 2016-2020: the area invaded by Russia concentrates about 40% of Ukrainian wheat. Source: ifip, Idele, itavi.
4. 2015-2016: Brexit, the United States and the entry of interference in consolidated democracies
Russian strategy was not limited to the post-Soviet space. In 2015 and 2016, two episodes appeared that changed the Western perception of foreign interference: the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election. In both cases, the discussion should not be simplified into a single causality. Neither Brexit nor Donald Trump's victory can be explained by Russia alone. But both processes showed that disinformation campaigns, digital operations and the amplification of polarising narratives could have an impact on democracies with a long institutional tradition.
The British Parliament's report on Russia argued that Russian influence on UK democratic processes had become a new normal and criticised the lack of sufficient government research into the European referendum. It is significant that the conservative government of Boris Johnson rejected, for years, an in-depth parliamentary investigation into the real weight of Russian interference in that vote: the refusal exposes a recurring difficulty of liberal democracies in the face of the hybrid phenomenon — the political cost of admitting that a founding process may have been contaminated can be perceived, from the ruling party, as greater than the cost of not investigating it. The point is not to claim that Moscow “caused” Brexit, but to warn that a foreign power could benefit from British fragmentation, amplify Euroscepticism and weaken the cohesion of the European project from the outside.
In the United States, Russian interference in 2016 opened a debate that still structures American politics. Investigations into influence operations, fake accounts, hacks, leaks, and digital propaganda showed that an election can be attacked without stolen ballot boxes or tanks on the street. Legitimacy erodes in another way: sowing suspicion, polarization and persistent mistrust.
The question remains: are we free when we choose whether a part of the public conversation was artificially manipulated by outside interests? The answer cannot deny the responsibility of the voters or replace the popular will with tutelary technocracies. But neither can it ignore the fact that electoral freedom requires information, transparency and protection from covert operations.
5. 2017-2019: the European Union as a space for internal dispute
Poland and Hungary before the later turn
Between 2017 and 2019, the discussion on Russia intersected with an internal problem of the European Union: the deterioration of the rule of law in some Member States. Poland and Hungary were then the most visible cases. The Polish PiS government promoted judicial reforms that altered the independence of the Judiciary. The 2017 reform brought forward the retirement age of magistrates — retroactively affecting those who already held office — and reformulated the appointment regime, which led the Court of Justice of the European Union to observe the measure. After partially reversing course, Warsaw sanctioned the well-known “Judges' Gag Law”, which coerced judges under sanction when they publicly criticized the reforms, affecting their freedom of expression and their role as an institutional counterweight. Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, advanced in an illiberal architecture of institutional concentration. Among the milestones of the decline are the closure of the Central European University (CEU) — one of the most important academic centers in the country — the growing control of the rest of the university system, the prohibition of pro-LGBT+ literature under the label of “gender ideology”, a sustained political campaign against George Soros as a unifying figure of the external enemy, and the creation by law of courts directly controlled by the Executive: an explicit attack on the republican guarantee of separation of powers and any minimum notion of judicial impartiality.
It should be stressed that the Polish government should not be automatically equated with the interests of the Kremlin. Poland, even under the PiS, maintained a historically hostile position vis-à-vis Russia and favourable to Ukraine's security. But it was true that the conflict between Warsaw and Brussels opened a window of opportunity for Moscow: the more divided the European Union appeared around the rule of law, the more difficult it was to sustain a common foreign policy.
Hungary presented a different case. Orbán not only defended a model of illiberal democracy; he also maintained for years an ambiguous and sometimes complacent relationship with Moscow. His use of the discourse of sovereignty, his criticism of Brussels, his resistance to certain European policies vis-à-vis Russia and his political proximity to Putin made Budapest a point of permanent tension within the European Union.
European justice as a pillar of the rule of law: judicial independence, equality before the law and republican checks on power.
Le Pen, AfD, Catalonia and the functionality of the extremes
In parallel, various Eurosceptic, nationalist or anti-system forces appeared as actors functional to the interests of the Kremlin. The issue was not always an organic subordination. Sometimes the convergence of interests was enough: weakening the European Union, questioning NATO, eroding support for Ukraine, amplifying anti-immigration narratives or presenting Russia as a defender of a supposed traditional civilization in the face of Western liberalism.
The case of Marine Le Pen in France was significant because of the loan received by her party from a Russian entity in 2014, her photo with Putin and the affinity of certain positions with the Kremlin story. In Italy, Matteo Salvini led the Lega Nord towards positions favourable to Moscow and held meetings with circles close to the Russian government. In Germany, sectors of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) defended positions favorable to Moscow or critical of support for Ukraine; several party deputies traveled to Russia and the Donbas in the midst of the 2022 invasion, generating a political scandal for contradicting the European alignment with Kyiv. The phrase “Putin's useful idiots” (Putins nützliche Idioten), popularized in the German debate, condenses the citizen perception of that functionality.
There were also suspicions and debates about the use of the Catalan question by pro-Russian networks. The European Parliament itself expressed concern about Russian meddling in Catalan separatism and urged national parliaments to create bodies to oversee the manipulation of information. The investigations pointed out contacts with figures from Carles Puigdemont's environment and opaque financing patterns hardly attributable to purely domestic phenomena. The central point is not to deny the existence of legitimate claims to autonomy or identity. The teaching is different: where there is a territorial, identity or institutional fracture, an external power can try to amplify it to weaken a Member State of the European Union or the EU itself.
Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin: an image that synthesizes European political ties with Moscow.
6. 2020-2023: pandemic, energy, INGE and Baltic countries
Misinformation as normal
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that misinformation did not need to be limited to election issues. Conspiratorial narratives, artificial doubts about vaccines, attacks on health institutions, and amplification of mistrust became part of a larger ecosystem. In that context, the Russian information war was integrated into a pre-existing crisis of confidence in many democracies.
European energy dependence was also a central component. For years, Russian oil and gas functioned as instruments of interdependence, but also as a potential tool of pressure. The 2022 invasion accelerated the reduction of that dependence, although the process was uneven. The energy problem showed that sovereignty is not only military: it also depends on networks, markets, infrastructure and decisions accumulated over decades.
Destination of gas exported by Russia: Germany 56.3 — Italy 19.7 — Turkey 15.8 — Netherlands 11.2 — China 10.8 (in million cubic meters). The European energy dependence turned into a strategic instrument.
The European Commissions on Interference
Between 2022 and 2023, the European Parliament paid greater attention to foreign interference through its special committees, such as INGE and INGE 2. Hybrid threats, disinformation, recruitment of elites, revolving doors, attacks on MEPs and cases linked to Ukraine, Hungary, Catalonia, Africa and the Western Balkans were discussed there. The European Union was beginning to recognize that democratic defense required broader instruments than traditional foreign policy.
That institutional recognition did not solve the dilemma, but it did name it. Interference was no longer an occasional anomaly but a constant practice. That is why the EU began to build response frameworks: rule of law reports, regulation of digital platforms, sanctions against disinformation, mechanisms against hybrid threats and cooperation between intelligence services.
The Baltic countries: minorities, memory and vulnerability
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania deserve a chapter of their own. The Baltic countries have several dimensions of vulnerability: border with Russia or Belarus, memory of Soviet occupation, Russian-speaking minorities, exposure to Russian-language propaganda, critical infrastructure and proximity to Kaliningrad.
The presence of Russian-speaking minorities should not be confused with automatic loyalty to the Kremlin. Many citizens of Russian origin reject war and do not identify with Putin. But the lack of plural media in Russian, Soviet nostalgia, the instrumentalization of monuments and social isolation can create spaces of vulnerability. Where a community feels symbolically expelled, an external power can present itself as protective.
Concrete cases illustrate how Russian influence operates on the Baltic plane. In Lithuania, Algirdas Paleckis — a former politician of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party — was prosecuted for espionage on behalf of Russia and, while awaiting sentencing, continued to participate in Russophile demonstrations alongside figures such as Tatyana Zhdanoka, a former MEP of the Russian Latvian Union. In the fall of 2021, according to documents revealed by Der Spiegel, the Putin administration received a specific strategic plan for the Baltic states whose stated axis was to sustain and exploit existing pro-Russian NGOs, maintain the Russian language in schools, and oppose the removal of Soviet monuments — an operational map that combines culture, identity, and political influence.
The democratic response cannot be permanent suspicion or identity denial. It must combine security, media literacy, civic integration, independent Russian-language media, defense of the national language, full citizenship, and technological protection. Sovereignty is not strengthened by symbolically expelling those who live within the political community; it is strengthened by preventing an authoritarian power from using them as an instrument of pressure.
Russian-speaking minorities in the Baltic region: around 6% in Lithuania, 27% in Latvia and 25% in Estonia. Demographic vulnerability that Moscow tries to turn into a pressure lever.
7. 2022: The Invasion of Ukraine and the Continuation of Hybrid Warfare
The large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 did not replace hybrid warfare with conventional warfare. He overlaid them. Military attacks coexisted with narratives about denazification, with campaigns to blame the West for war, with energy pressure, with attempts to divide the European Union, and with operations aimed at eroding citizen support for Kyiv.
The policy of European sanctions, the reduction of energy dependence, military assistance to Ukraine and the broadening of the security debate demonstrated that the conflict was not concentrated at the front. The war was hitting markets, elections, supply chains, digital networks, and entire societies. The underlying question was whether the West could hold a common position without its own internal divisions being weaponized.
The war also forced us to rethink the relationship between democracy and security. Democracies cannot avoid all vulnerability: their openness is part of their identity. But they can build resilience. The transparency of political financing, electoral protection, cybersecurity, digital literacy and media independence became elements of national and European defense.
8. 2024: the year of visible election interference
Voice of Europe and the European elections
The Voice of Europe case became one of the clearest episodes of 2024. Czech authorities sanctioned that platform and people linked to Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk for operating as a pro-Russian influence network in Europe. The investigation indicated that the site was used to disseminate propaganda against Ukraine, influence the European elections and offer financial or media support to political actors useful to Moscow.
The European Parliament reacted with particular concern because the allegations involved possible payments to MEPs or candidates to spread Russian propaganda. The importance of the case lies not only in a specific platform, but in the method: build apparently independent media, connect them with political networks, finance convenient narratives and take advantage of the electoral campaign to amplify positions favorable to the Kremlin.
Doppelgänger and fake domains
In September 2024, the US Department of Justice announced the seizure of domains used in an operation known as Doppelgänger. The logic was to replicate or mimic legitimate media sites to spread false or manipulated content, reduce support for Ukraine, and fuel political divisions in the United States and elsewhere.
The operation shows an evolution of classical propaganda. It is no longer just a state media that broadcasts a biased version. These are imitation ecosystems: fake pages, fabricated identities, coordinated accounts, content adapted to local audiences and a strategy of confusion where plausibility matters more than truth.
Romania: the annulled election
In December 2024, Romania offered one of the most delicate cases for the rule of law. The Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the presidential election, which had been surprisingly won by Călin Georgescu, a far-right and pro-Russian candidate, after intelligence reports about a coordinated campaign of foreign influence, digital manipulation and intensive use of networks such as TikTok and Telegram were declassified.
The decision generated a profound democratic dilemma. If an election was distorted by an outside operation, the state has a duty to protect the integrity of the vote. But if the institutional correction comes late or is poorly communicated, it can be perceived as replacing the popular will. Romania thus became a borderline case: how to defend an election without destroying confidence in the election?
The re-election of 2025 and the subsequent victory of a pro-Western option did not eliminate the problem. The threat persisted in the form of disinformation, digital polarization, and suspicion about institutions. The Romanian lesson is that democratic protection must be preventive: transparency of platforms, monitoring of spending, early reaction and media literacy before the crisis reaches the court.
Moldova: vote, purchase of wills and geopolitical border
Moldova is a particularly sensitive case because it condenses several layers of pressure: proximity to Ukraine, presence of Transnistria, historical dependence on Russia, dispute over European identity, and economic vulnerability. In 2024, Moldovan authorities denounced an illegal vote-buying and financing operation aimed at weakening the referendum on European integration and the re-election of Maia Sandu.
The pro-European referendum ended up being approved by a very narrow margin, while Sandu denounced an unprecedented external intervention. In 2025, the Moldovan government even spoke of millions of dollars destined to manipulate the electoral will. The lesson is clear: interference does not always seek a crushing victory. Sometimes it seeks that every democratic victory is so narrow and suspicious that it is born weakened.
9. 2025: Reconstructions, energy and outsourced intelligence
Poland after PiS
Poland shifted places in this chronology. After the 2023 parliamentary elections, Donald Tusk returned to government at the head of a pro-European coalition. The European Commission acknowledged that change and in 2024 moved forward with the closure of the Article 7 proceeding against Poland, after receiving an action plan to restore the rule of law.
But that reconstruction was not automatic. Legacy judicial reforms, the role of the Constitutional Court and the political limits of the new government continued to generate tensions. In 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union again ruled on issues of independence and impartiality linked to the Polish Constitutional Court. The case demonstrates that winning an election can open a democratic transition, but does not by itself repair damaged institutions.
Poland also offers an important lesson for this article: a government can be illiberal in domestic terms without being pro-Russian in foreign policy. That is why it is advisable not to confuse categories. The deterioration of the rule of law opens up opportunities for external actors, but does not automatically make every government an agent of the Kremlin.
The Baltics and the exit of BRELL
In February 2025, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania completed a historic step: they disconnected from the Russian-Belarusian BRELL electricity system and synchronized their grids with the European continental system. The decision had a technical dimension, but also a political one. It reduced a dependency inherited from the Soviet era and closed a possible avenue of energy pressure on three democracies bordering Russia.
Energy independence did not eliminate Baltic vulnerability; it displaced it. Since then, the importance of protecting cables, interconnectors, navigation systems, power grids and communications has increased. Hybrid pressure is no longer expressed only in media or social networks. It also appears in critical infrastructure.
Bulgaria: Espionage, Euroscepticism and Dispute over European Orientation
Bulgaria deserves a place of its own because it doesn't fit into a simple formula. It is a member of the European Union and NATO, but retains political, media, energy and cultural vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Russia. Party fragmentation, repeated elections, distrust of institutions and the presence of socially pro-Russian sectors mean that interference can operate more by accumulation than by direct control.
In 2025, a network composed of Bulgarian citizens was convicted in the United Kingdom of espionage for Russia, under the direction of fugitive Jan Marsalek. The operation included surveillance against journalists, dissidents and targets linked to Ukraine. The case reveals a contemporary modality of outsourced intelligence: unofficial networks, economic motivations, transnational operations and tasks commissioned by agents connected to Moscow.
On the political level, forces such as Vazrazhdane/Revival pushed anti-NATO discourses, support for Ukraine or the adoption of the euro, amplifying narratives compatible with Russian interests. At the same time, Bulgarian society cannot be reduced to that dimension: there is also a real European orientation, institutions that resist and governments that have sustained commitments to Ukraine and the EU. Precisely for this reason Bulgaria is relevant: it shows how hybrid warfare operates in grey areas, not just in declared allies.
10. 2026: Post-Orban Hungary, Bulgaria and the Baltic under electronic pressure
Hungary as a post-iliberal transition
The most relevant change of the recent period is Hungary. It is no longer appropriate to describe it as a persistent case of Orbán in power. In April 2026, Viktor Orbán was defeated after sixteen years of political dominance. Péter Magyar and the Tisza party inaugurated a post-iliberal transition stage, with promises to recover institutional controls, limit mandates, dismantle capture structures and rebuild the relationship with the European Union.
That doesn't erase the previous period. The Orbán cycle remains a fundamental case to understand how a democracy can be emptied from within through legal reforms, media concentration, political use of sovereignty, pressure on universities and civil organizations, and closeness to Moscow. But the current point is another: Hungary allows us to study the electoral exit from an illiberal architecture and the risks of subsequent reconstruction.
The question that remains open is whether a reformist majority can dismantle a capture system without falling into reverse decisionism. The defense of the rule of law does not consist only of replacing actors: it consists of reconstructing limits. If Hungary manages to do so, it will go from being a warning to a case of democratic recovery. If not, it will show that the post-liberal transition can also get caught up in the logic of concentrated power.
Bulgaria and the persistence of a grey area
In 2026, Bulgaria continued to appear as one of the grey areas of European space vis-à-vis Russia. Discussion of disinformation, Euroscepticism, common currency, support for Ukraine, and policy toward Moscow continued to run through its internal scene. Bulgarian risk is not necessarily a frontal break with the West, but a slow erosion: fragile governments, pressure from pro-Russian actors, narratives that delegitimize Brussels, and a society exposed to campaigns about inflation, sovereignty, traditional values, or migration.
That is why Bulgaria should be read alongside Romania and Moldova, not as a copy of them. The three cases form a Black Sea corridor where Russia combines historical memory, religion, energy, propaganda, social media, anti-establishment parties and electoral opportunities. Pressure does not always seek the same thing in each country; but it does point to the same thing in strategic terms: hindering a coherent European line against Moscow.
The Baltics: from power cable to GPS jamming
The second layer of pressure on the Baltics is electronic warfare. From 2024 to 2025, reports of GNSS/GPS interference in the Baltic, especially near Kaliningrad, multiplied. In May 2026, a Romanian F-16 under NATO command shot down a Ukrainian drone over Estonia after regional and Ukrainian authorities attributed the diversion to Russian interference. Russia, for its part, accused the Baltics of facilitating Ukrainian attacks and threatened retaliation, accusations rejected by Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
These episodes show that hybrid pressure is no longer limited to propaganda or political financing. It also interferes with air navigation, civil alarms, trains, exams, airports, and everyday perception of safety. The eastern border of NATO thus experiences a state of alert where a technical error, a diverted drone or a diplomatic falsehood can generate political escalation.
11. The European Response: From Reporting to Hybrid Sanctions Regime
The European Union responded gradually. At the beginning, internal rule of law mechanisms predominated. Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, introduced into the acquis communautaire by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, allows the Council to suspend certain rights of a Member State by qualified majority, but its "ultima ratio" nature and the requirement of unanimity to trigger the sanction rendered it ineffective in practice. In 2014, the European Commission created the European Union Framework for Strengthening the Rule of Law — a three-stage process of evaluation, recommendation and monitoring, less disruptive than Article 7 — which the von der Leyen Commission reviewed and strengthened during its mandate. These classic instruments were then joined by the annual reports on the rule of law, infringement procedures, budgetary conditionality and the institutional dialogue with the Member States. Those instruments are still necessary, but they were designed mainly for internal problems of legality and democracy.
The intensification of the Russian threat forced the repertoire to expand. In 2024, the EU created a specific sanctions regime against Russian destabilising activities, with the capacity to act against individuals and entities linked to sabotage, attacks on critical infrastructure, cyberattacks, information manipulation, electoral interference and the instrumentalisation of migrants. In 2025 and 2026 that framework was expanded and used against new persons and entities linked to hybrid operations.
The regulation of digital platforms was also strengthened. The Digital Services Act allowed large platforms to be required to mitigate systemic risks, including electoral manipulation. The Romanian case made this discussion urgent: if a coordinated campaign can grow algorithmically to alter an electoral process, platform transparency ceases to be a technical issue and becomes a constitutional issue.
The difficulty is maintaining balance. Democracies must prevent covert operations, illegal financing, and coordinated manipulation, but without transforming legitimate disagreement into permanent suspicion. Freedom of expression protects opinions, even uncomfortable opinions. What it does not protect is the opacity organized by a foreign state to simulate public conversation.
“Government exists for the good of the governed; when it is sustained in fear, oppression, or humiliation, it betrays its own raison d 'être.”
— From Tomás Moro, Utopía, Book I
Critical editorial image of Russian influence in Europe: a graphic response to the Kremlin's expansionism.
12. A Republican defense against interference
The continuity of cases allows a conclusion to be drawn: Russia does not need to completely control a country to obtain strategic benefits. It is enough to divide, block, discredit, delay or make every democratic decision born under suspicion. That logic appears in Brexit, in US operations, in Voice of Europe, in Romania, in Moldova, in Bulgaria and in the pressure on the Baltics. Hybrid warfare does not always conquer; it often pollutes.
Nor are all the actors functional to Moscow direct agents of the Kremlin. Some are; others share interests; others exploit narratives that match Russian propaganda; others simply weaken European responsiveness. Serious analysis must distinguish between subordination, affinity, opportunism, and functionality. Without that distinction, whistleblowing loses accuracy and can morph into reverse propaganda.
Republican advocacy demands several layers: political funding control, media transparency, judicial independence, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection, digital literacy, minority integration, international cooperation, and platform regulation. But it also demands a political culture: citizens capable of withstanding complexity, not reducing all disagreement to treason, and understanding that freedom is not defended with the methods of authoritarianism.
At that point the humanist core of the problem appears. In the face of the rise of exclusionary nationalisms and populisms that turn the flag into a moral border, liberal democracy must remember that the republic cannot be based on humiliating the other. Sovereignty does not consist of denying faces, histories or minorities; it consists of building a political community capable of deciding freely without being manipulated from the outside or degraded from within.
Conclusion
The relationship between Russia and Western democracies is one of constant conflict, but not always visible under the classical forms of war. Its continuity is best seen in the chronology: Ukraine, Brexit, United States, Poland, Hungary, Le Pen, AfD, Catalonia, the Baltic countries, Voice of Europe, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Doppelgänger, Baltic energy synchronization and electronic warfare of 2026. Each case adds a different layer to the same problem: the erosion of democratic trust.
The rule of law appears as a target and as a response. It is white because disinformation, opaque funding, energy pressure, espionage and sabotage seek to weaken institutions, divide societies and make the law seem powerless. But it is also an answer because only transparent institutions, judicial controls, fundamental rights, pluralism and public responsibility make it possible to defend freedom without betraying it.
Europe and the United States are not necessarily in a direct and declared war against Russia. But their democracies are disputed. The final question, then, is not only what Moscow does, but what democracies do with themselves: whether they manage to rebuild trust, integrate those who can be instrumentalized, protect their elections, uphold freedom of expression and act with the serene firmness of a republic that does not confuse security with fear.
Faced with a strategy that aims to turn democratic openness into weakness, the answer must be exactly the opposite: make that openness a source of resilience. Not an unarmed naivety, but a conscious freedom from its enemies; not a republic enclosed in itself, but a community capable of defending its dignity without losing its soul. Democratic strength does not consist in imitating the adversary, but in demonstrating that law, freedom and public truth can still sustain a superior form of coexistence.
Reuters and AP. Annulment of the 2024 Romanian presidential election over allegations of Russian interference and digital manipulation. - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Digital News Report 2025: Romania. - Reuters. Moldova and allegations of vote buying and Russian interference in European elections and referendum, 2024-2025. - Council of the European Union. Sanctions regime against Russian hybrid activities, 2024-2026. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions-against-russia-hybrid-threats/
Reuters and Guardian. Network of Bulgarian citizens convicted in the United Kingdom for espionage for Russia, 2025. - European Policy Centre. Studies on disinformation and European elections in Bulgaria, Germany and Italy; and Bulgaria as a case of dispute over European orientation. - Centre for the Study of Democracy. Russia's Hybrid Toolbox in Bulgaria. https://csd.eu/russia-hybrid-toolbox/
After almost two decades of illiberal government, the result in Hungary reopens the possibility of a republican return. A reflection on democratic fragility in the face of authoritarian populism.
Notes from an election night in the UK and the island of Ireland. Something breaks down in the political center of the archipelago, and something else, still undefined, begins to take shape on the margins.
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