EU leaders met on March 19 and 20, 2015, and agreed without dissent to set up the East StratCom Task Force. Their stated reason: “the need to challenge Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns.” The decision followed Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 that July, which killed 298 people.
It was one of the first institutional answers to what both the European Union and NATO now call hybrid warfare. A decade later the two organizations run overlapping defenses.
The EU track: exposure, then sanctions
East StratCom settled on three jobs, according to the EU’s own EUvsDisinfo project: better communication about the Union in the Eastern Partnership countries, support for independent media there, and a public campaign that documents and debunks pro-Kremlin falsehoods. By April 2020 its database held more than 8,000 cases. A weekly review tracks recurring narratives. The European Parliament began funding professional media monitoring in 2018, and the December 2018 EU Action Plan acknowledged the project’s work.
Naming falsehoods is one tool. Penalties came later. On October 8, 2024, the EU announced a sanctions framework aimed at “individuals and entities engaged in actions and policies by the Russian government that undermine the fundamental values, security, independence, and integrity of the EU,” Euromaidan Press reported, citing the Council of the EU. The regime covers electoral interference, sabotage of critical infrastructure, coordinated disinformation, malicious cyber activity and the instrumentalization of migrants. Those listed face asset freezes and travel bans.
The framework came from a proposal by EU High Representative Josep Borrell. It followed a European Council call on June 27, 2024, condemning “all types of hybrid activities targeting the EU,” and it sits beside the EU Hybrid Toolbox, operational since December 2022.
The NATO track: intelligence and deterrence
NATO describes Russian practice in blunt terms: “political interference, malicious cyber activities, economic pressure and coercion, subversion, aggression and annexation.” Its answer has three parts. The Joint Intelligence and Security Division collects and assesses information to spot hybrid activity, and the Alliance helps members shore up civil preparedness, cyber defense, energy security and infrastructure. It has widened its response options, mixing civil and military measures, and raised force readiness.
Since 2016 NATO has said that hybrid actions against one or more Allies “could lead to a decision to invoke Article 5.” In 2025 it created a Special Coordinator for Hybrid Threats; Assistant Secretary General Jean Charles Ellermann-Kingombe holds the post.
Shared ground
The two organizations meet at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, inaugurated in October 2017. NATO says 32 countries support it, along with NATO and the EU themselves.
Sources
- Countering hybrid threats (NATO)
- "To Challenge Russia's Ongoing Disinformation Campaigns": The story of EUvsDisinfo (EUvsDisinfo / EU East StratCom Task Force)
- EU targets Russian hybrid threats with fresh sanctions framework (Euromaidan Press)
