ISD Resident Senior Fellow for Digital Integrity, Jiore Craig, spoke to POLITICO about possible Russian influence reaching EU institutions months and targetting voters online in the lead up to the European elections in June.  

“The risk for the coming European elections is that bad actors like foreign actors and Russia are going to try to blend in to people’s online spaces when their guard is down,” Jiore noted. 

According to Czech and Belgian authorities, the media outlet Voices of Europe is functioning as a front for Russian propaganda and disinformation. A review of the outlet’s YouTube channel revealed that 16 hard-right-to-extreme-right Members of European Parliament (MEPs) gave interviews, with several blaming Ukraine for the start of the war and calling on it to make concessions. Those MEPs have denied taking or being offered money for those interviews or have said they could not remember who invited them to the debates or how they were contacted.