Disinformation can have serious real-world consequences. We only need to look back at the recent COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. As vaccines were being developed, social media was flooded with false claims questioning their effectiveness and exaggerating potential risks. The impact was devastating and is reflected in the high number of COVID-19-related deaths worldwide.
Deliberate, targeted manipulation of information is widely used for political, financial, and military purposes. It has also become a key element of hybrid warfare – a strategy that goes beyond conventional military operations to include cyberattacks and coordinated disinformation campaigns. This trend has been particularly visible since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
Against this backdrop, an international research initiative was launched in 2024 to counter foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), including disinformation. The initiative brings together researchers from the University of Warsaw, led by Prof. Robert Kupiecki at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies. In cooperation with the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ISP PAN) and the Polish Center for Technology Development in Wrocław – and with support from consortium partners such as DROG, Debunk.org, Osavul, and Faktabaari – they are responsible for two of the project’s seven work packages. Their contributions provide both the conceptual and operational foundation of the entire initiative.
Working across borders
The SAUFEX (Secure Automated Unified Framework for Exchange) research initiative is designed to counter a growing challenge known as FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference). But what exactly does FIMI mean? According to the European External Action Service (EEAS) – the European Union’s diplomatic service – it refers to a mostly non-illegal pattern of behavior that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes.
These actions are manipulative, deliberate and carried out by both state and non-state actors, including their representatives operating inside or outside their home countries. They fall strictly under the category of foreign interference; domestic activities are not included. Importantly, FIMI goes beyond disinformation alone. As researchers emphasize, the acronym covers any form of manipulative action within the information space.
The EEAS identifies two countries as the main sources of FIMI activity from the European Union’s perspective. The first is Russia, which relies on diplomatic networks, security services, state-controlled media, and social media platforms to conduct such operations. The scale of these activities is staggering: according to the 4th EEAS Report on FIMI Threats (March 2026), in 2025 alone the EEAS detected 540 FIMI incidents globally, involving over 10,500 unique digital channels and approximately 43,000 pieces of content. Russia was attributed 29% of all documented incidents, while an additional 65% remained formally unattributed but displayed indicators of coordination with Russian-linked infrastructure. Poland itself was among the most frequently targeted countries, with 17 documented incidents. The EUvsDisinfo archive – which documents foreign interference, including pro-Kremlin propaganda – shows that Russian disinformation is particularly prominent in the context of the war in Ukraine. More than 40% of all entries in the archive relate to this country. Recent examples of false claims include statements such as: “The US revived Nazis in Ukraine and provoked the war,” “As in Bucha, Ukraine kills its own citizens in Sumy to attract international attention,” “Ukraine has camps to train 10-year-old soldiers like Nazi Germany,” and “Zelenskyy went to the Pope’s funeral in Rome to line his pockets.” These narratives are widely documented in the database and have been encountered by everyday users across online platforms and social media.
The second country identified as influencing democratic processes and values is China. Its approach includes economic coercion, cyberattacks, and transnational repression – including deliberate suppression of critical voices abroad, a phenomenon the EEAS calls Transnational Information Suppression (TIS). While Chinese FIMI infrastructure has shown some convergence with Russian narratives, the 4th EEAS Report characterizes this alignment as largely opportunistic rather than systematically coordinated, primarily taking the form of amplification of each other’s content around important geopolitical events. Although the concept of FIMI is relatively new – becoming fully operational in 2022 – the European Union has long viewed such activities as a major threat to its democratic community. This makes cooperation between European countries all the more important.
The SAUFEX initiative is carried out by an international consortium of academic, analytical, and technological organizations from Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Poland, including the University of Warsaw. Its goal? As Dr. Piotr Sosnowski from the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw explains:
“SAUFEX focuses on integrating artificial intelligence technologies, building unified knowledge bases, and developing coordination mechanisms at both the national and EU levels. Its outcomes primarily address institutional and regulatory solutions. In the long term, their implementation is expected to strengthen societal resilience, partly through measures developed and proposed by the Resilience Council. It will also enable greater involvement of civil society in shaping policies at both national and European levels.”
“The technical output of the project will include systems for the automated detection of foreign interference and coordination of responses. This will help reduce information noise and allow users to freely and safely participate in public debate,” adds Dr. Sosnowski.
Building resilience
The first work package has already been completed. Its goal was to map existing gaps and challenges in how EU member states address FIMI. Several reports were produced, including an overview of current approaches to detecting and responding to FIMI. One of them – “The current state of detection and analysis of FIMI” – summarizes the strategies, policies, and tools currently used across EU countries.
“The report, developed in collaboration with the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, offers insight into existing capabilities, coordination mechanisms, and cooperation frameworks in different national contexts across the EU. The study revealed significant differences in regulatory approaches between countries, highlighting both the complexity of the disinformation challenge and the difficulty of designing effective responses while safeguarding democratic values,” notes Dr. Sosnowski.
Another key outcome of this work package was the launch, in September 2024, of a pilot Resilience Council against Disinformation. The body serves in an advisory capacity to the Polish Foreign Minister. As Dr. Sosnowski explains:
“It is built on inter-ministerial cooperation, bringing together representatives of public administration, non-governmental organizations, and academia,” he says.
The Resilience Council comprises 22 experts and is chaired by Tomasz Chłoń, the Foreign Minister’s plenipotentiary for countering international disinformation. At the same time, this national initiative is only a starting point. Work is now underway to turn its findings into concrete action at the European level. In December 2024, the European Parliament approved the creation of a The Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield (EUDS), tasked with countering foreign interference and safeguarding democratic processes across EU member states.
Mapping FIMI narratives
The second work package – focused on analyzing the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by actors operating in the European information space – has now yielded its first major public deliverable. In 2025, the SAUFEX research team published D3.1: FIMI Narrative Report, an in-depth analysis of Russian disinformation narratives targeting EU audiences.
The report introduces a structured three-level typology of FIMI narratives: meta-narratives (deep civilizational frames rooted in Russian exceptionalism), systemic narratives (challenging the Western-led international order), and problem-specific narratives (addressing particular events such as the war in Ukraine or migration). Using this framework, the team analyzed four major thematic areas: Russia as a systemic FIMI actor, Russian narratives about the invasion of Ukraine, the instrumentalization of migration as a hybrid warfare tool, and FIMI targeting the 2024 European Parliament elections across nine EU member states.
Methodologically, the report combined structural narrative analysis with large language model (LLM) tools to identify, extract, and verify narrative patterns at scale. This approach directly feeds into the AI-based detection systems being developed in the project’s subsequent technical work packages.
This article is an updated version of a text originally published in Polish on the Serwis Naukowy UW website on 12 May 2025. It was updated in April 2026.
