The Gino Germani Institute of Social Sciences and Strategic Studies, an Italian think tank based in Rome and focused on countering disinformation, has presented its 2026 research paper, “Antisemitism and Russian Active Measures from the Tsars to Putin,” authored by researcher Massimiliano Di Pasquale.
The study, which traces developments from the era of the tsars through the Soviet period to the present day, argues that Russian antisemitism is not merely a relic of the past but an active component of contemporary hybrid warfare. Through the use of trolls, bots and compliant media outlets, Moscow is said to stoke antisemitism across the Western world – on the right (via white supremacism) and on the left (via radical anti-Zionism) – with the sole aim of eroding the social fabric of liberal democracies.
Putin’s Russia, much like other non-Western powers, such as China and Iran, is described as systematically deploying cognitive warfare both domestically, to control its population, and abroad, to influence and destabilize Western democracies through the large-scale dissemination of false or misleading strategic narratives. A strategic narrative, the report explains, is a tool used by political actors to construct a shared interpretation of the past, present and future of international relations in order to shape opinions and influence behavior at home and overseas. Such narratives aim to distort reality in the minds of both the public and policymakers in target countries, thereby justifying Russia’s geopolitical interests.
Russian media have long given prominence to conspiracy theories about historical events, creating fertile ground for fueling domestic antisemitism and reinforcing Russia’s supposed moral primacy over allegedly “anti-Russian” nations. In August 2016, the Russian television channel REN TV aired a documentary claiming that a group of 300 Jews, Freemasons and “Illuminati” had orchestrated the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 to trigger a global crisis. The program, which also linked this alleged conspiracy to events such as the Chernobyl disaster and the September 11 attacks, was condemned by several Jewish organizations and anti-antisemitism forums.
The global Covid-19 pandemic likewise provided Russian media with an opportunity to circulate conspiracy theories blaming the United States and Jewish groups.
“The coronavirus pandemic could be the result of a biological warfare attack by the United States against China, Russia and Iran. Zionist neoconservatives have developed a strategy for global domination through perpetual wars. The motto of this group is ‘the end justifies the means,’ and the means include the use of genocidal biological weapons. There are alarming reports that the United States is experimenting with germs targeting specific ethnic groups and a certain genotype. The United Kingdom’s health system has found that people from black ethnic groups are more severely affected by Covid-19 and that mortality rates are higher among black and Asian ethnic groups than among whites.”
This article appeared in the Italian and English editions of Geopolitika.ru, a website linked to Aleksandr Dugin. It propagated disinformation narratives about Covid-19 and biological weapons consistent with pro-Kremlin claims that the virus had been engineered by the US government. It also advanced antisemitic tropes about secret elites or a “deep state” controlling American policy from behind the scenes – frequently labelled by pro-Kremlin outlets as “Zionist neoconservatives.” The claim that Covid-19 was created as a US biological weapon has been amplified by Russian, Iranian and Chinese media alike.
“The coronavirus is a biological weapon of the ‘deep state.’ It is disturbing to discover that all the most important research into bacteriological weapons financed and coordinated by the Pentagon has been developed mainly in two countries: Georgia and Ukraine. Both have become colonies of the United States, thanks to the color revolutions, for which the financier of the Open Society, George Soros, has claimed credit.”
This quotation comes from a March 24, 2020 article published by News Front’s German-language edition. It reflects a familiar antisemitic conspiracy theory targeting recurring themes in Russian dezinformatsiya: the American “deep state,” the Jewish financier George Soros, and the so-called color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. Two years later, allegations about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine would become a cornerstone of Kremlin disinformation accompanying Russia’s full-scale invasion – to the point where even Tulsi Gabbard, today’s director of national intelligence for the Donald Trump administration, openly spread the falsehood.
The Kremlin intensified its propaganda and disinformation efforts both to sustain support for the “special military operation” abroad and to bolster patriotism at home.
As EUvsDisinfo noted in a February 2023 article, “The Kremlin has long been engaged in disinformation related to biolabs and biological weapons… This theme, along with other disinformation narratives linked to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, is useful to the Kremlin because it often triggers strong psychological reactions in audiences, particularly fear. It is therefore no surprise that we continue to observe pro-Kremlin disinformation claiming, for example, that the United States is conducting tests with bio-agents on Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, or that Russian armed forces have successfully thwarted US military biological programs in Ukraine.”
The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the brutality witnessed in Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin, Chernihiv and Mariupol, quickly revealed what the report describes as the Ukrainophobic and genocidal nature of present-day Russia. In response, the Kremlin intensified its propaganda and disinformation efforts both to sustain support for the “special military operation” abroad and to bolster patriotism at home.
Employing the odious tactic of “mirror accusations” – projecting onto the victim the crimes the aggressor is preparing to commit – Vladimir Putin declared on Feb. 24, 2022 that Ukraine was a Nazi state committing genocide against its own people. Claims that Ukraine is an illegitimate or failed state, or a “Nazi” or “satanic” entity posing a threat to Russia, “are used to make it easier for the Russian population to accept the necessity of an aggressive war, massive bombardments of civilian targets and the destruction of peaceful cities, and to enable the Russian army to overcome moral barriers to violence and the killing of civilians.”
When critics pointed out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – elected in 2019 with 73 percent of the vote – is himself Jewish, and that members of his family were killed by the Nazis, Moscow responded by disseminating false narratives aimed at delegitimizing his Jewish identity. Kremlin figures also revived spurious claims that “the worst Nazis were Jews,” thereby minimizing the role of antisemitism in Nazi ideology. Such distortion of the Holocaust, promoted by Russian state propaganda, is itself a form of antisemitism.
On May 1, 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking on the Italian TV program Zona Bianca on Rete 4, asserted – while discussing the alleged “Nazification” of Ukraine – that Zelensky’s Jewish origins were no defense because “even Hitler had Jewish origins; the greatest anti-Semites are Jews themselves.”
As Jason Stanley writes in his 2018 “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.”:
“Central to European fascism is the idea that Jews are the agents of moral decay. According to European fascism, it is Jews who bring a country under the domination of the (Jewish) global elite, using the instruments of liberal democracy, secular humanism, feminism and gay rights, which are employed to introduce decadence, weakness and impurity. Putin, the leader of Russian Christian nationalism, has come to see himself as the global leader of Christian nationalism, and is increasingly regarded as such by Christian nationalists around the world, including in the United States. Putin has emerged as the leader of this movement in part thanks to the global reach of recent Russian fascist thinkers such as Aleksandr Dugin and Alexander Prokhanov, who laid its foundations.”
Antisemitism, a core element of this radical doctrine, is also portrayed as a distinguishing feature of the Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kirill, a former KGB second-degree agent known as Mikhailov, who has repeatedly described the February 2022 invasion as a holy war against a corrupt, “satanic” and “homosexual” West.
As Alexander Soldatov wrote in a 2017 Novaya Gazeta article: “From the standpoint of official chauvinist ideology, disseminated in Russia through the brainwashing of television, our history is merely a matter of pride, representing an unbroken line of great victories; and if there are dark pages in that history, then suspicious foreigners must be behind them. It is the usual paranoid conspiracy theory. They do not see the Russian people in the atrocities of the Revolution, but only external enemies, a fifth column formed in Russia with ‘Western money’; and the tsar was not killed by Russian revolutionaries, but by evil Talmudist enemies who sacrificed him to the devil.”
The sheer volume of falsehoods disseminated by the Russian propaganda machine defies enumeration.
By late 2022, rising hostility towards Jews prompted Moscow’s Chief Rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, now in exile, to urge Russian Jews to leave the country while they still could, warning that they risked becoming scapegoats for the hardships caused by the war in Ukraine. In a January 2023 interview with CBC Radio, he said: “Over the past month, I have observed a change, a major change, in the direction the country is taking. It has moved from authoritarian to more totalitarian. And the Iron Curtain… is descending lower every day. And antisemitism has returned.”
In October 2023, further evidence of the toxic convergence of antisemitism and Ukrainophobia emerged when Russian singers Vika Tsyganova and Vadim Tsyganov claimed in an interview that early Russia-Ukraine negotiations had failed because of the negotiators’ ethnicity, arguing that Russian Jews should never have been sent to negotiate with a “Jewish Ukrainian regime.” They also advanced the conspiracy theory that Jews had orchestrated Russia’s invasion as part of a global plan.
The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has likewise been a frequent target of Russian state media attacks, often laced with antisemitic undertones, owing to his staunch support for Ukraine and his Jewish identity.
Since 2023, and in part due to the failure of the so-called “special military operation” to achieve its initial objectives, Moscow has intensified its hybrid disinformation campaigns, including antisemitic ones. To justify its war, the Kremlin has relied on a barrage of propaganda portraying Ukraine as a Nazi-occupied state requiring “denazification” – a narrative that employs ethnic slurs and dehumanizing language to legitimize violence against Ukrainians.
These narratives operate on two fronts: accusing Jews while simultaneously depicting Ukrainians as anti-Semites by fabricating incidents of antisemitism in Ukraine, circulated by pro-Kremlin media since 2014.
Here is one example of a blatant falsehood:
“A group of around 30 Ukrainian hooligans rampaged around midnight on Friday in Uman, brutally beating Jews outside the temple of Rabbi Nachman… Four Jews were taken to hospital…] The police arrived but did nothing to help.”
This bogus report, published on Jan. 12, 2020 by several Russian and Ukrainian outlets, was denied by Ukraine’s National Police, which confirmed that no such event had occurred.
“Ukrainian armed formations used the synagogue in Uman as a depot for weapons and ammunition… Photos show Ukrainian militants loading equipment disguised as construction debris onto trucks.”
Published on March 30, 2022, this claim – promoted by Russia’s Ministry of Defense – was likewise unfounded. According to Iryna Rybnytska of the Rabbi Nachman Foundation, the images in question clearly showed that the synagogue was closed and that the individuals depicted were not on its premises.
The sheer volume of falsehoods disseminated by the Russian propaganda machine defies enumeration. Yet their constant production remains an effective weapon of hybrid warfare: fact-checking and expert rebuttals rarely halt their spread, while repeated exposure fosters a distorted perception of reality across broad segments of society. Underpinning this strategy is a sophisticated psychological understanding of mass audiences, exploiting fascination with conspiracy, distrust of official communications and entrenched political prejudices.
The Italian report on the use of antisemitism in Russian propaganda, presented by the Gino Germani Institute, offers a valuable evidential basis for understanding and exposing the mechanics of Russian information warfare. It may also assist Western governments in developing more robust defenses against disinformation campaigns designed to undermine social and political cohesion.