Disrupting the foundations of FIMI

Before taking a deeper dive into the 4th EEAS Report on FIMI Threats, let’s first look at the pro-Kremlin narratives observed over the past week. Pro-Kremlin FIMI activity focused on distorting both security developments and Europe’s economic outlook.

One example was the false claim that the rocket targeting a joint US-UK military base located on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia was launched from a submarine in a false flag attack by the US. Unsubstantiated false flag narratives are a key element of Russia’s FIMI toolkit, used as part of a broader strategy to flood the internet with ‘alternative truths’ that obscure the facts. In reality, US and British authorities attributed the failed attack on Diego Garcia to Iran.

Exploiting the economic fallout from the developments in Iran, pro-Kremlin narratives also amplified claims that Europe faces an agricultural crisis and that Russia is ‘the only actor capable of saving Europe with the supply of fertiliser’. While Russia remains a major supplier, the EU is not dependent on it alone, importing fertiliser from a broad and diversified group of non‑Russian partners.

Dismantling the FIMI house of cards

Following the publication of the 4th EEAS Report on FIMI Threats last week, we looked at the dense and interconnected ecosystem of actors, infrastructures, and narratives that make up the FIMI galaxy. This week, we turn to the tools the EU has at its disposal to counter FIMI and raise the costs for perpetrators.

Instead of simply tracking what FIMI looks like – manipulated videos, misleading narratives, swarms of bots – it’s important to ask what holds all this together. See it as a vertical system, like a house of cards. At the top is the false content people see. Beneath that are the technologies that spread it, followed by the operators who run campaigns. At the bottom sit the funding and organisational structures that support everything above. If that base is disrupted, the rest of the system becomes unstable.

The machine underneath

FIMI campaigns require money, people, and technology. It is, in this framing, a supply chain, with deception as the product. Overt or covert funds are used to outsource operational work to intermediaries, contractors, and commercial providers, deliberately providing plausible deniability and complicating attribution. FIMI infrastructure also intersects with organised crime: threat actors cooperate with criminal networks that provide technical infrastructure, global reach, and operational cover, including hosting fake-news servers or managing bot farms.

Go after the base

Understanding the house of cards helps identify which cards to pull. For years, the standard response to FIMI was to debunk it: find the lie, correct the record, move on. This is insufficient, as it keeps counter-FIMI actors on the back foot, reacting while the next attack is already being prepared. What is needed instead is a shift from reacting to disrupting – targeting the foundations by identifying critical nodes across infrastructures, intermediaries, and supply chains.

The tools needed already exist and work best in combination: sanctions can target not just state sponsors but intermediary companies and contractors; law enforcement can pursue the criminal networks providing infrastructure; digital regulation, including the EU’s Digital Services Act, can compel platforms to remove coordinated fake accounts; and building public resilience through media literacy and prebunking makes audiences harder to manipulate. Isolated measures have limited impact if parallel systems remain untouched.

The economic logic

There is no single server to switch off, no one operation to shut down for good. The goal is to make each successive operation more expensive, more legally risky, and less reliable, until those running them start questioning whether the investment is worthwhile. We cannot stop others from using FIMI as a weapon of hybrid warfare, but we can make it as hard as possible and ultimately push FIMI actors to reconsider whether pouring so much time and money into it is still worth it.

While eliminating FIMI might be an impossible task, we can raise its price until it stops being cost-effective. Hit the base, and the house of cards will fall under its own weight.