Russian information and psychological operations (IPSO) against Ukraine have grown over four years from scattered fakes in 2022 into an industry. It is supported by billion-dollar budgets, specialized military units, and bot networks based on artificial intelligence.
This is most clearly visible in the energy sector: russia is destroying the energy system with strikes and trying to convince Ukrainians that their own government is responsible for the blackouts.
Molfar Intelligence Institute researched Russian IPSO against Ukraine in various sectors.
How IPSO spreads
This is a conveyor belt with a budget and command, not a spontaneous phenomenon. IPSO units operate within the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the FSB, the Ministry of Defense, and the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. Expenditures on IPSO are estimated at at least 4.6 billion dollars per year (SBU estimate).
The typical injection route that analysts traced on materials about the Armed Forces of Ukraine has four levels:
The core — statements by Russian officials and state agencies.
Reinforcement — military correspondent channels, occupation administration resources, aggregator channels, bots and trolls in comments.
Source whitening — proxy portals, "experts," and forgeries posing as authoritative media return the plant as "independent."
Precision delivery — cloned Telegram channels for the military, mass social media for the general public, leaflets and email newsletters for the border areas and occupied territories.
Bots provide scale. According to a leak studied by Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, WDR and Delfi, the "Social Design Agency," which likely works for the Russian presidential administration, published almost 34 million negative comments in just January–April 2024.
Telemetrio counted 198.9 thousand Telegram channels with signs of artificial inflation as of October 2025 — 120.3 thousand more than a year earlier.
Based on interviews with ten experts, Molfar analysts identified four mechanics: synchronized chaos, parasitizing on real vulnerabilities, overloading a person at a moment of crisis, and technological asymmetry. The latter means that AI makes lies cheaper, while debunking arrives hours or days late.
Energy: the real problem, a substituted explanation
Energy is the clearest example of parasitizing on real vulnerability: russia destroys generation capacity and then mixes a false explanation into the true facts. According to DiXi Group, in 2025 there were more than 1,200 attacks on energy infrastructure — a record figure.
The study recorded about 40 theses from November 2022 to February 2026; the peak of the campaign fell in April–July 2024. There are two goals: to undermine trust in the authorities by provoking protests, and to shift responsibility for the blackouts from Russian shelling onto the Ukrainian authorities.
Persuasiveness comes from a mix of truthful data on generation losses with manipulative conclusions, half-truths, anonymous "insiders," and distorted quotes from officials. Negative forecasts are also spread through international media. According to an analysis of debunkings by VoxCheck, StopFake, and Ukrenergo, the claims are distributed as follows:
- "Deficit and tariffs" — 60–65% of the talking points. Example: fabricated tariffs of 7.5 or 4.52 UAH per kWh supposedly due to the "arrival of BlackRock."
- “Export” of electricity — 20–25%. Balancing technical flows between the Ukrainian and European power systems within ENTSO-E are presented as electricity sales during a deficit.
- "Unfair distribution" — 10–15%. Pitting regions against each other ("the east without power, the west with power") without explaining the technical reasons.
Leak in sync with the strikes
Each new wave of strikes was accompanied by a synchronous wave of disinformation. The operations are deliberately timed to moments of greatest vulnerability — shelling and blackouts: a person in panic does not check the source but hurries to share.
Bots create the illusion of a "grassroots"
How many people believed
According to DiXi Group data (2024), more than a third of Ukrainians believed manipulative explanations for the outages: 15.4% — in the "massive ek
This is classic parasitism on a real vulnerability. Russia does not invent the energy crisis but amplifies a genuine one. Therefore, as the study emphasizes, combating such disinformation cannot be limited to fact-checking.
IPSО is not only about energy
Energy is one of eight campaigns and two research cases. The rest target other vulnerable areas:
- ТЦК — 127 documented cases,
- The Armed Forces of Ukraine — the longest and most technologically advanced campaign — from "drug addicts and Nazis" in 2022 to mass AI videos in 2026. Combat morale generally remained stable.
- Nuclear blackmail — 76 cases, most often about a "dirty bomb" and strikes on nuclear power plants; none of the claims was confirmed.
- Humanitarian aid as a "cover" for corruption — against the backdrop of this narrative, support for Ukrainian refugees in Poland fell from 94% to 48% (CBOS).
Three more campaigns — about the "Azov" regiment, student mobilization, and the 2026 Olympics — and two separate cases are analyzed in the full study.
Where IPSO works and where it doesn't
IPSО does not work everywhere. The combat morale of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and support for "Azov" within the country remain stable, despite the longest campaigns, and international aid continues to arrive. The most vulnerable turned out to be rear-area topics: electricity, mobilization, attitudes toward refugees abroad. There, the cumulative effect of disinformation is already visible both in sociology and in crime statistics.
In 2025–2026, the influence shifted from short-term intimidation to a long-term change of the social paradigm.
How to counter IPSO
Experts surveyed by Molfar analysts and the study's recommendations agree — fact-checking alone is not enough. What is needed:
- Proactivity. Preemptive rebuttal instead of "firefighting." For the energy sector, this means, in particular, explaining in advance technical flows within ENTSO-E and the reasons for regional differences in outages.
- Systemic cooperation between the state, analytical centers, and public organizations. Partnerships with platforms for rapid blocking of fakes,
- Media literacy. Free courses like "Diia," school programs modeled on Finland, quick responses in a humorous format modeled on Taiwan.
- Solving real problems. Propaganda parasitizes mobilization, energy, and the situation of military personnel — this requires a comprehensive solution, not just an information response.
To counter influence, one needs to remember a simple rule: a strong emotion during a blackout is a signal to stop and find the primary source before reposting this or that information.
About the Molfar Intelligence Institute
Molfar Intelligence Institute (MII) — an analytical center and educational institution working in the fields of OSINT, HUMINT, GEOINT training, countering FIMI, cybersecurity, strategic communications, and social influence.
MII has trained over 7,000 participants, developed more than 100 educational programs, and contributed to the introduction of OSINT and cybersecurity into Ukraine's national school curriculum.