The modern level of economic, political, and informational globalisation offers vast opportunities for development and progress. It also creates favourable conditions for influencing the emotions, beliefs, and behaviours of people worldwide due to the virtually unrestricted spread of information. Authoritarian regimes such as Russia weaponise informational influence tools in the same way they exploit economic dependencies, energy levers, and other resources to harm democracies. Ukraine, the EU, and the entire democratic world are forced to seek systematic solutions to effectively counter malicious foreign information manipulation and interference, or FIMI, in national and global information spaces.

Malicious influence on the information space is a crucial component of Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine. Ukraine is subjected to the most aggressive and large-scale information attacks, where new FIMI technologies are tested in real-time. At the same time, Ukraine has unique experience in countering hostile information influences, which can be valuable for other democratic states.