Citizen Collaboration

Cross-border Disinformation Targeting the Ukrainian Army and Foreign Volunteers Was the Most Prevalent in Late 2025

Fundación Maldita.es publishes along ten other fact-checking organization a report which compiles the results of monitoring conducted between October 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, as part of the ATAFIMI project.

January 30, 2026
Cross-border Disinformation Targeting the Ukrainian Army and Foreign Volunteers Was the Most Prevalent in Late 2025

 The initiative aims to identify and analyze incidents of information manipulation and interference (FIMI) originating from Russia in various countries and languages.

The monitoring covers the following participating countries: Spain, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

These are the main highlights:

  • The most prominent narrative backed by disinformation claims during this period targeted the Ukrainian Army and the foreign soldiers fighting for Ukraine, with posts containing false claims collecting over 2 million views.

  • Unfunded claims targeting Volodímir Zelensky and accusations of corruption also regained traction and were detected in 9 out of 10 countries. For example, tweets accusing him of owning a Russian passport or of buying Bill Cosby’s house in New York were viewed over 3 and 1 million times, respectively.

  • The use of AI-generated content to support disinformation claims was widespread. Most viral posts were labeled with debunks by independent fact-checkers on Facebook and, at times, showed platform warnings on TikTok identifying the content as AI-generated. In contrast, only one Community Note was shown on X, and no warnings appeared on Telegram channels.

  • Several users sharing disinformation claims on X had blue checks, which was formerly used to indicate an account was verified and now means the user is paying a subscription and normally gets more visibility.

 

Full report is accessible clicking here.

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