Russian Disinformation ‘Flooding Ukraine’ Amid US Absence, Experts Warn

WASHINGTON DC – Key disinformation experts in the US are sounding the alarm after Russia has notably increased its attempts to beef up its false propaganda campaign inside and outside Ukraine following Washington’s recent decisions to “pull out from the information war,” as the experts put it.  

US President Donald Trump’s administration recently cut billions of dollars from US foreign assistance, including over $268 million allocated to support independent media and the free flow of information.

The move also came amid the defunding of key US broadcast services, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, as well as the dismantling of a State Department office aimed at countering foreign disinformation.

“Any nail in the coffin of the counter disinformation industry is a win for countries like Russia,” Nina Jankowicz, American disinformation expert and author of “How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict,” told Kyiv Post.

In a recent Atlantic Council research, Muhammad Tahir, a nonresident senior fellow at the think-tank’s Eurasia Center who regularly documents Russia’s disinformation campaign, highlighted mounting concerns over Moscow’s efforts to exploit emerging gaps in Ukraine’s information space created by recent US funding cuts.

“Russian disinformation [is] flooding Ukraine,” Tahir told Kyiv Post, warning that Moscow’s goal isn’t just to mislead – “it’s to erode trust entirely.”

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More specifically, Tahir highlighted the latest examples of Russian disinformation campaigns across Ukraine, including on April 5, when a missile struck a children’s playground in Kryvyi Rih, killing at least nine kids.

“Within hours, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on Telegram that the strike had hit a gathering of Ukrainian military commanders,” he recalled, explaining that it wasn’t just about destruction: “It’s about distorting reality, sowing moral confusion inside Ukraine, and muddying the truth for Western audiences.”

“Now imagine you’re a soldier stationed in this town – or a parent whose child is serving nearby. The doubt. The confusion. The grief. That’s exactly the point,” he emphasized.Later in the same month in the Sumy region, Russian-linked Telegram channels circulated a fake health alert, supposedly coming from the Sumy City Council’s Health Department, as Tahir noted. 

“It warned of a mysterious disease spreading among Ukrainian soldiers and urged civilians to avoid contact with troops [on] the front line. Days later, Russian forces advanced into that same region – the one they had already filled with fear and disinformation,” he said.

The Kremlin’s tactics keep evolving, Tahir went on to add, with the war in Ukraine being the biggest conflict the world has seen since the advent of smartphones and social media.

“In Mykolaiv, for example, there’s a Telegram channel called ‘Truthful Mykolaiv.’ It sounds local, looks – but quietly amplifies Kremlin propaganda. The tone is measured, the language familiar, but the message is always the same: trust Moscow, doubt Kyiv,” he said.

“This is how Russian disinformation works: lies wrapped in legitimacy, disguised as local truth, and seeded online to provoke panic and paralyze judgment. It certainly affects everyone,” he added.

That probably is the Kremlin’s goal, as Tahir puts it: 

“That’s how confidence dies. That’s how a nation is destabilized from within.”

In Ukraine, nine out of 10 outlets rely on subsidies, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – which has been de facto subsumed by the State Department – was the primary donor, according to Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a Paris-based press freedom campaign group.

The risk of a funding cut is that it could open the door to other sources of funding that may seek to alter the editorial line and independence of these media, the RWB warns. 

In his Atlantic Council research, Tahir highlights mounting concerns that with far fewer credible sources able to report on local news stories across Ukraine, Kremlin disinformation will become much harder to counter.

Jankowicz, who once briefly led former President Joe Biden’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” agrees.  

Russia, she said in her recent testimony before US Congress, is taking advantage of the current environment, launching interference campaigns that aim to undermine the democratic process with little pushback.

Her speech came as the Trump administration last month announced the closing of a State Department office called the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) hub, which was designed to counter foreign disinformation, stating that the effort had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans.”

“I definitely think our adversaries are celebrating the end of R/FIMI,” Jankowicz told Kyiv Post, adding that while it “was never perfect,” the center “certainly exposed campaigns coming from our strategic adversaries, especially Russia and China, over the past several years.”

“And now that method of exposure, that office dedicated to this work, has been dismantled,” she said.