Analytics by IESS

The Insider exposed the special Kremlin unit behind disinformation, whose operations IESS has been tracking across a dozen European countries. Now, this unit delivers sabotage, not just disinformation.

Why arrests outside a Danish defense plant are not a case of espionage, but target acquisition for kinetic sabotage – exposing how Moscow uses local proxies to probe NATO's pain tolerance.

Adam Sybera on Andrej Babiš, Czech Populism and the Politics of Self-Preservation.

Moscow and Tehran are actively exploiting Europe's autumn protests over school funding and migration to create a continental crisis of trust in democratic institutions and support for Ukraine.

Russia is destroying commercial shipping, killing sailors, and terrorizing the Black Sea region with drones, while direct violations of NATO airspace are forcing the Alliance to act before maritime security completely collapses

Czech outlets are calling in unison with Kremlin that US aid to Ukraine an unsustainable financial burden, but It amounts to roughly 0.13% of America's GDP.

By restricting battlefield internet and withholding ballistic missile warnings, Trump is actively disarming Ukraine’s air defense on the eve of a winter terror campaign.

A forensic autopsy of the October strikes on Russian cloud infrastructure and the sudden collapse of the West’s synthetic isolationist wave.

How POTUS cast the die for Kremlin fuel: coercing Kyiv, dismantling allied sanctions, and proving that political survival runs on bloody diesel.

Russian war criminal Surovikin must face punishment for his crimes.

By excusing Russian airspace violations and renewing military intelligence ties, Slovakia is actively dismantling allied deterrence from within.

Moscow is handling a plague outbreak in Irkutsk roughly the way it handled a nuclear meltdown in 1986.

Why Robert Fico is building monuments to Russian subjugation.

How Moscow is building justifications before the shot.

Russia is quietly stripping conscripts of their right to a legal representative just as Putin orders the armed forces to grow by hundreds of thousands.

Why the "Two Ukraines" narrative is a trap for European security.

How Moscow weaponizes starvation and geography in Ukrainian city.

Russia’s calculated hunt for civilians in Kyiv.

Right after the elections, Russia's government has announced tax increases to cover a war-driven budget deficit that keeps widening despite two previous rounds of tax increases.

Russia’s state nuclear company is scaling up production of drones already testing Polish & Romanian airspace, while the West’s dependence on Russian nuclear fuel shields Rosatom from the sanctions.

Slovak and Czech outlets say Europe's economy is collapsing without Russian gas, but Eurostat, the ECB, and the euro's own numbers say otherwise/

Minsk actively steers Russian kinetic terror to the edges of NATO.

A Czech pro-Kremlin outlet claims Ukrainians wanted this war. Russia's own propagandists said otherwise, on camera, before it started.

Physical indicators of Russia's next war.

Why the occupied territories invalidate Russia’s 2026 elections.

Russia has already sabotaged a defense plant on Slovak soil, and the PM still won't say the word Russia.

How Putin & Co are engineering parliamentary elections.

A claim invented on a Kremlin-linked Telegram channel about war-weary Ukrainians longing for Russia's return just picked up a Slovak byline.

Moscow invaded Ukraine to "denazify" it, while building a mass youth movement back home that mirrors the Hitlerjugend.

Andrea Jeska on Grozny, Beslan, Ukraine and Europe’s Lost Illusions.

Unmasking the Orbán's monopoly over Hungarian public media.

Fake funeral wreaths appeared outside defense companies in Lithuania and Czechia – a small, cheap scare tactic that only makes sense if Western support for Ukraine is actually working.

A hacked Polish radio station and a chain of AI-generated fakes tried to convince two allies their border was suddenly in dispute. However, it wasn't – that was the point.

How Russia radicalizes Poland and fractures Europe.

IESS spoke with Katerina Demetrashvili, Member of the Czech Chamber of Deputies from the Czech Pirate Party, about the political phenomenon of Tomio Okamura, the transformation of SPD from permanent opposition into a governing force, and the way populism, conspiracy narratives and the erosion of objective truth create an environment increasingly compatible with Russian information warfare.

Tomio Okamura doesn't have to answer to Moscow to keep producing the outcomes Moscow wants.

Andrej Babiš isn't taking Czechia out of NATO, but building the ambiguity that makes formal membership beside the point.

The infiltration of Polish utility systems by state-linked operatives is a live-fire test of NATO’s critical infrastructure and a stark warning of impending hybrid escalation.

Moscow is quietly shielding its water utilities from environmental liability just as Ukraine warns Russia is about to make water infrastructure its next winter target, a coincidence worth taking seriously.

A drone crash near the Bulgarian-Romanian border matches, almost point for point, the false-flag playbook IESS just described several days ago.

Fifteen years of Viktor Orbán's government draining dividends from Hungary's only nuclear plant left it with no reserves when the Danube finally ran low.

The preparation of captured UAVs for false flag operations marks a dangerous escalation in hybrid warfare, designed to paralyze Alliance decision-making and break European solidarity.

Without air defence missiles Ukraine can't shoot down Russian ballistics: the West must act NOW

Russian cruise missile's path into Poland is definitely not an accident.

Unable to secure a decisive victory in Ukraine, the Kremlin is looking for another form of escalation.

Adam Sybera and Vojtěch Boháč unpack Andrej Babiš’s comeback, fossil tycoon proxies, and the anti-climate backlash.

The EU's largest sanctions package in four years lands on top of Ukraine's strikes on Russia's war economy, and leaves Moscow only two ways out.

Mykhailo Drapatyi's promotion to commander-in-chief is less a verdict on Oleksandr Syrskyi than proof Ukraine has grown its own officer for the war it is actually fighting.

Ukrainian drones just hit the soft underbelly of Putin’s war economy.

Sulyok’s exit marks the irreversible end of Orbán’s authoritarian regime. Or?..

Aftermath of Fedorov's resignation.

Ukraine finalizes the lockdown of Russian forces around Crimea.

Krzysztof Tołwiński’s support for the Russian military threatens Polish security and Euro-Atlantic unity.

Russia will escalate the war in Autumn 2026.

Russia loses 19 oil tankers in 72 hours in a failed attempt to supply Crimea.

The more Russia struggles from its own decision to “denazificate” and “demilitarizate” Ukraine, the more “wounded bear in corner” kill civilians in agony.

The Kyiv-Warsaw axis has de facto become the gravitational center of European security today.

NATO's unity on the eve of the July summit in Ankara faces another test of strength, and this time the fault line once again runs through Bratislava.

In psychological and sociological literature, there is a well-documented phenomenon: aggression is most often directed not against the real source of a threat, but against the closest available "other."

Fico really hates Zelenskyy, however has never criticized Russia

What the Russian Hacker Attack on Plzeňský Prazdroj Means

How the Kremlin's lies turned Russian air defense into a threat to itsown population

How Tulsi Gabbard's “Report” on Biolabs in Ukraine Became an Unexpected Gift for Ostankino

The killing of Semyon Skrepetsky in a parking lot in Biała Podlaska on June 15 means much more than just “an isolated act of political violence on NATO soil”

There is a recurring pattern in Russia’s information warfare. The Kremlin rarely conceals its true objectives. Instead, it encourages audiences to look away from where those objectives are actually being pursued.

Just a few months ago, one of the Kremlin’s key victory narratives was the image of Crimea as an impregnable fortress. Today, the situation has changed.

The strategic reality of the Crimean Peninsula is undergoing an irreversible transformation. Once heavily promoted by Moscow as an impregnable fortress, a symbol of imperial resurgence, and a safe rear base, occupied Crimea is rapidly turning into an isolated logistical trap.

The weaponization of civilian infrastructure has become a defining characteristic of Russian military strategy.

On the night of May 29, 2026, the war in Ukraine breached NATO territory once again, this time with devastating clarity.

During the Kyiv Stratcom Forum 2026, Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, articulated a stark warning regarding the scale and sophistication of Russian Cognitive Battlespace, filled with PSYOPs. Backed by colossal historical experience in the distortion of meaning and reality, the Kremlin's current cognitive warfare in Ukraine is not a localized issue. Rather, it serves as a live testing ground for psychological tactics designed to subvert democratic institutions, fracture societal unity, and threaten the broader security architecture of Europe.

It can only be countered through tighter sanctions enforcement, unwavering support for Ukraine, and the robust fortification of NATO’s eastern flank.

Migration in Central Europe is no longer only a humanitarian or border-management issue, but a growing instrument of hybrid warfare used by Russia to exploit public fatigue, fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment, and weaken regional resilience. This article examines how migration-related fears are being politicized and amplified in Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia — turning the consequences of Russian aggression into a tool of destabilization against Ukraine and its European partners.

May 9, 2026, fixed the institutional paralysis and cognitive defeat of the Kremlin

Why Slovakia’s PM is flying to Moscow and why this is once again dividing the EU

How technological fires in Russia’s rear are destroying the myth of an unbreakable empire.

The appointment of Mykhailo Fedorov as Minister of Defense was not merely a personnel rotation, but a signal of a change in the very logic of managing the war.

What the story of Ukrainian grain from occupied territories actually means.

The fall of Viktor Orbán is not a story about how “external forces” broke yet another sovereign leader.

Any contacts with the Russian ambassador under the current circumstances cannot be regarded as a neutral diplomatic gesture.

Yes, this is indeed a catastrophe. But not the one Lukáš Machala is talking about.

In our explainer, we trace how Russia’s war against Ukraine unfolded long before the full-scale invasion of 24 February 2022. It follows the trajectory from the Revolution of Dignity and the occupation of Crimea through the hybrid war in Donbas, the evolution of Kremlin propaganda, and the escalation into Europe’s largest war since World War II. Along the way, it shows how narratives about “coups,” “Nazis,” elections, the church, and demonization of Ukrainian leaders were weaponized to justify aggression and later evolved into modern influence operations powered by digital networks, FIMI techniques, and AI-driven manipulation. This is not simply a campaign against Ukrainian statehood and agency, but an act of war against Europe. As Russia finalized its wartime mobilization model and prepares the capacity for further escalation, the war is unlikely to end quickly and will likely expand beyond its current form.