Putin’s Influence Machine Targets European Far-Right as Trump Shifts Stance

On 28 March 2025, The New York Times report­ed that Rus­sia is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly under­min­ing Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tems through financ­ing and dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns aimed at far-right par­ties across the con­ti­nent. The arti­cle begins:

For years, the threat of a Rus­sia intent on expan­sion has loomed over much of Europe. It is not just the war in Ukraine. Moscow has also sta­tioned mil­i­tary forces in friend­ly coun­tries and fanned the flames of desta­bi­liz­ing polit­i­cal move­ments across the con­ti­nent. Now, as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion strikes a con­cil­ia­to­ry tone toward Rus­sia and pulls away from some of Amer­i­ca’s old­est allies, Euro­pean lead­ers who long enjoyed the back­ing of the pow­er­ful U.S. mil­i­tary sense an extra­or­di­nary moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. For near­ly 80 years, the Unit­ed States has been the defen­sive and finan­cial cor­ner­stone of demo­c­ra­t­ic secu­ri­ty pacts cre­at­ed after World War II, in large part to keep the Sovi­et Union from march­ing across Europe. And even now, more than 80,000 Amer­i­can troops are deployed in Europe, some in a show of force right on Rus­si­a’s doorstep…

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Key Points:

• Rus­sia alleged­ly finances elec­tion cam­paigns of pro-Russ­ian can­di­dates and pro­motes far-right par­ties through coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion operations.
• Ger­many’s AfD par­ty mem­bers have been sus­pect­ed of receiv­ing Russ­ian back­ing, while the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has crit­i­cized Euro­pean rejec­tion of far-right groups.
• In Moldo­va, Pres­i­dent San­du faced a chal­lenger accused of being “Moscow’s man,” bol­stered by for­eign vote-buy­ing schemes and influ­ence operations.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has cut vital USAID grants to pro-democ­ra­cy groups in both Moldo­va and Ser­bia, poten­tial­ly enabling Russ­ian influ­ence efforts.

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) is an ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion unit­ing right-wing and far-right move­ments world­wide under shared prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions. Although Rus­sia ini­tial­ly sought to lead this move­ment, its role has been dimin­ished by the war in Ukraine.

For a list of world­wide GNCA polit­i­cal par­ties, go here.

For a GIOR analy­sis of GNCA posi­tions, go here.

Dis­claimer: The GOR uti­lizes AI to gen­er­ate sum­maries of news items, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion and the key points that fol­low. Any text fol­low­ing the key points is con­text added by GIOR edi­tors. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real-world” photography.