EUROPE–RUSSIA — Europe Has a Story of Its Own to Tell

Turning Europe’s Values and Openness into Strategic Strength

R.M. Westerink; 24 August 2026 

The Problem Is Already Here

Europe does not have the luxury of treating its information relationship with Russia as a problem for some distant post-war future. Russia is already operating inside Europe’s political environment. European institutions have documented sustained Russian information manipulation aimed at weakening trust, dividing societies and undermining support for Ukraine [1][2]. Anti-EU and Russia-sympathetic narratives also find receptive channels among parts of Europe’s far right, where domestic political opposition to European integration can overlap with themes useful to Moscow [3].

At the same time, the war continues to consume Ukrainian and Russian lives. Europe is investing heavily in military deterrence because Russian aggression makes that necessary. But military strength addresses only one part of a confrontation in which Russia also works continuously on what populations believe, fear and are prepared to endure.

That creates an uncomfortable asymmetry. Europe is strengthening its capacity to resist Russia physically while remaining much more hesitant about developing the informational and narrative capability that could help change the political environment sustaining permanent confrontation.

The urgency therefore leads directly to a practical question: how can an open democratic Europe develop such strength without becoming what it is trying to resist?

Don’t Copy Russia — Organize Europe

Russia’s advantage comes partly from centralization. Government, major media, education, culture and historical interpretation can be pushed toward a common political story. Europe cannot reproduce that model without damaging the openness and pluralism it seeks to defend. Nor does it need to.

Most of the required ingredients already exist. EU institutions and national governments possess strategic-communication capabilities. Universities and research institutes study Russia. Independent journalists and public broadcasters produce Russian-language information. Civil-society organizations maintain networks across borders. Technology providers can help preserve access when platforms are blocked. Russian journalists, academics, artists and expatriate communities understand Russian society from within.

Europe’s central weakness is not absence but fragmentation. These capabilities often operate beside one another without adding up to a sustained strategic effort. The task is therefore to connect, protect and sustain them rather than to create a European propaganda ministry.

The European level can help by maintaining the overview: mapping capabilities, identifying gaps, supporting long-term audience research, protecting continuity of funding and ensuring that access technologies and independent Russian-language media do not disappear when political attention moves elsewhere. The objective is an enabling architecture, not centralized editorial control.

Coordinate Capability, Not Opinion

That distinction provides the democratic design principle for the entire approach: Europe can coordinate capability without coordinating opinion.

Defensive work remains necessary: detecting manipulation, protecting elections and exposing covert influence. Europe also needs an explanatory capability directed toward its own citizens, connecting sanctions, support for Ukraine, defense spending and policy toward Russia to a comprehensible strategic purpose. But the outward-facing task is different again. It is to ensure that Russian citizens can encounter credible information and alternative perspectives about Europe, Ukraine, the war and Russia’s possible future.

Those perspectives should remain plural. An independent Russian journalist should not sound like an EU spokesperson, and a historian, economist or cultural institution should not become an instrument of European foreign policy. Their independence is precisely what gives them credibility.

For the same reason, Russian voices will often matter more than European ones. A credible alternative information space must allow Russians to argue about Russia rather than simply reproduce European preferences in Russian. Europe’s role is to help keep that space open.

Give Another Future a Voice

The strongest European contribution may not be another rebuttal of Kremlin claims. It may be to keep another future imaginable.

Russian citizens can be invited to consider questions that permanent-confrontation narratives tend to close down. What has the war cost Russian families and regions? What does long-term isolation mean for economic and technological opportunity? Would European security policy look different if Russia stopped threatening its neighbors? Under what conditions could sanctions eventually be removed? What could restored travel, research, education, trade and cultural exchange mean for ordinary Russians?

The WE ARE EUROPE values explored elsewhere in this project give substance to that alternative.[E] Europeans have gradually come to expect protection against arbitrary power, equality before the law, freedom to live differently and the peaceful resolution of political disagreement. These do not have to be presented as European lessons for Russians. They can be presented as possibilities Russians are equally entitled to consider.

A Russian does not become less Russian by wanting protection against arbitrary power. Russian culture does not disappear because political leaders can be replaced. Russian dignity does not require Ukrainians to surrender theirs. And Russian security does not inherently require permanent hostility toward Europe.

This is where Europe’s openness can become an offensive strategic strength. Europe need not persuade Russians to become European. It can ensure that permanent confrontation is not the only future they are allowed to imagine.

Europe Can Build This

This approach requires persistence rather than a campaign. Russia’s narrative ecosystem was built over years; a European capability cannot be switched on during crises and dismantled when headlines change. Independent media, research, audience knowledge, cultural networks and technologies that preserve information access need continuity.

The financial scale should also be kept in perspective. Narrative capability cannot replace military deterrence, and no serious European strategy should suggest otherwise. But compared with fighter aircraft, missile defense, ammunition production and military formations, the resources required for journalism, research, translation, digital access and strategic coordination are modest. If they can weaken hostile narratives, preserve alternatives inside Russian society and strengthen Europe’s own resilience, their potential strategic return is substantial.

Europe also possesses an advantage Russia cannot easily reproduce. Its information environment is plural and often untidy, but credibility is distributed among thousands of independent sources. A Russian does not have to trust the European Commission to encounter Europe. The trusted source might be a Russian journalist in Riga, a scientist in Berlin, relatives in Prague, an independent newsroom or personal experience of Europe itself.

Most of the pieces therefore already exist. What is missing is the determination to make them add up: sustained organization, political guardianship, audience knowledge and a credible proposition about what a peaceful future relationship could offer.

Russia spent years building a story Russians are asked to live in. Europe does not need to build another one for them. Europe has a story of its own to tell — and it can help keep open the possibility that Russians may someday choose a different story for themselves.

Appendix — Ideas for European Action

No single institution should own this capability. EU institutions, national governments, independent media, universities and research institutes, civil society, technology providers and Russian-language actors all have potential roles. Members of the European Parliament deserve particular mention as possible initiators and guardians: they can ask whether the capability exists, bring actors together, scrutinize gaps and funding, and help keep the effort anchored in the democratic values it is intended to protect. National parliamentarians, governments, the European Commission and the EEAS can exercise comparable responsibility from their own positions.

The responsibility is both strategic and human. Europe must protect its own democratic environment, while the continuing loss of Ukrainian and Russian lives gives political representatives another reason to ask whether Europe is using every legitimate instrument that could make permanent confrontation less sustainable. The following are starting ideas rather than a blueprint.

1. Map what Europe already has.

Create a European inventory of Russian-language journalism, research, cultural and diaspora networks, access technologies and existing EU and national initiatives. Identify gaps before creating new structures.

2. Give the capability political guardians.

Create sustained cross-party attention in the European Parliament and national parliaments. The role is scrutiny, continuity and convening — not editorial direction.

3. Know the Russian audience.

Build long-term research into what different Russian audiences believe, fear and expect, including which alternative futures they themselves find credible.

4. Protect independent voices.

Provide stable multi-year support, legal resilience and access technologies for independent Russian-language media, research and civil society while explicitly protecting editorial independence.

5. Make Europe’s future proposition tangible.

Explore what Europe could credibly offer a Russia that respects its neighbors: security, sanctions relief, travel, trade, research, education and cultural exchange. ‘Europe is not your enemy’ becomes stronger when people can see what that could mean.

6. Measure the right things.

Do not ask whether Russians have become pro-EU. Ask whether access to independent information improves, permanent-enemy assumptions weaken, European intentions are better understood and alternative futures remain visible.

The first step may therefore be the simplest: ask who is responsible for ensuring that Europe’s existing capabilities add up to a coherent strategic capability.
If the answer is nobody, the organizational gap has already been identified.

References

[1] European External Action Service (EEAS), Information Integrity and Countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), including reporting on Russian information operations.

[2] European Commission, European Democracy Shield and related measures concerning democratic resilience, information integrity, media freedom and pluralism.

[3] European Parliament materials and European research on Russian interference, disinformation and relationships with political actors and movements inside the European Union.

Earlier Europe Is Us articles informing this argument

[A] EUROPE–RUSSIA — How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In — August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-how-russia-built-story.html

[B] EUROPE–RUSSIA — Russia Has a Story. Does Europe? — August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-russia-has-story-does.html

[C] Beyond Russky Mir — May 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/05/beyond-russky-mir.html

[D] Europe Needs a Strategy of Confidence toward Russia — June 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/06/europe-needs-strategy-of-confidence.html

[E] WE ARE EUROPE — seven-article values series and Key Notes — August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/we-are-europe-key-notes-to-series.html