Virtual Manipulation Brief 2025: From War and Fear to Confusion and Uncertainty

The “Virtual Manipulation Brief 2025” analyses the shifting landscape of digital influence operations targeting NATO, Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States. The current issue marks a complete redesign of our data collection and processing pipeline, expanding from only two social media platforms to ten. This significant change necessitated a fundamental restructuring of the baseline (our reference data and metrics for measuring manipulation), which will guide our future research in this area. An estimated ~7.9 % of all the interactions we tracked show statistics-based signs of coordination. Kremlin-aligned messaging bursts were roughly twice as frequent as their pro-Western counterparts, and about three times as frequent for the posts that appeared on more than one platform. This implies the broader reach and tighter synchronisation of Kremlin-orchestrated operations.