Russia ramps up disinformation war on UK
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The gist
Russian state-affiliated media produced around 40,365 UK stories in September 2026 alone, The Independent reports.
The posts cast Britain as ungovernable and defenceless, a framing experts say erodes trust.
Background
The Independent's exclusive reporting says Russia's disinformation war on the UK has reached new highs, with state-affiliated media pushing hundreds of thousands of stories on social media over the past six months portraying Britain as ungovernable, defenceless and a legitimate Russian target. The analysis comes from Osavul, a risk intelligence firm that tracks global hybrid threats and supplies technology to Nato, which examined Russian state-affiliated actors, state-owned media, state agencies and officials with a combined audience of 1.37bn. False claims seen by the paper include that the UK bombed the Russian city of Voronezh with Storm Shadow missiles, that British police were threatening to arrest people for using air conditioners, and that UK figure Andy Burnham was "powerless to stop the UK's collapse".
How it unfolded
- Feb 2025State-media conversations about the UK being an adversary "dramatically increased after the Trump administration sat down with the Russian government in Riyadh", according to Andy Pryce of RUSI.
- Sep 2026Russian state-affiliated media output about the UK rose by around 15 per cent, producing around 40,365 stories about the UK.
- Oct 2026Similar levels of disinformation were pushed as in September.
- Nov 2, 2026The Independent publishes exclusive reporting that Russia's disinformation war on the UK has reached new highs, with hundreds of thousands of stories pushed on social media in six months.
Key terms
- Nato
- An intergovernmental military alliance of member states bound to collective defense against outside attack.
- Storm Shadow
- A Franco-British long-range air-launched cruise missile with low observability, known in France as SCALP-EG.
- RUSI
- The world's oldest defence and security think tank, founded in 1831 in London.
Source: Wikipedia
Who’s saying what
- Analysts
- Osavul said the aim was "to leave British readers with a lower opinion of their own state, and readers abroad with the sense that Britain is not a serious power".
- Expert
- Putin critic and anti-corruption campaigner Sir Bill Browder said the campaigns "had very big success" in the UK and could "get exponentially worse" without government action, warning that AI's role is only beginning.
- Expert
- Andy Pryce, a former British diplomat and RUSI associate fellow, said authoritarian governments "usually need a foreign enemy to point to" and that "the UK is reflected as an enemy more".