New report reveals scale of Kremlin’s information warfare in Central Asia

A major new study has exposed the systematic nature of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) targeting Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The report “Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan: Under Pressure”, published in April 2026 by the European Neighbourhood Council (ENC) in partnership with Internews, draws on five months of intensive monitoring from October 2025 to February 2026.

Funded by the European Union’s CARAVAN project, the research combines AI-assisted analysis of 581,059 posts from 577 accounts across Telegram, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and websites with 14 expert interviews and two roundtable discussions.

Foreign online influence campaigns in #Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 and #Uzbekistan 🇺🇿?
To date: this is the largest public #FIMI big-data/AI & sociological analysis made by colleagues on #CentralAsia at @ENC_Europe
🔗 https://t.co/TO6Gm4gGmP https://t.co/scXutyeV9o pic.twitter.com/KeVquzBoYx
— Samuel Doveri Vesterbye (@SamuelJsdv) May 20, 2026

The result is one of the most granular portraits yet of how external actors – overwhelmingly Russia-are shaping public discourse in two strategically vital Central Asian states. Every expert interviewed identified Russia as the primary external information actor. The study identified 3,008 narrative instances that align with a predefined taxonomy of 32 specific FIMI narratives. These are not random disinformation bursts but sustained, structured campaigns.

Telegram as the primary battlefield

Telegram dominates the FIMI ecosystem. It accounts for 88% of narrative instances in Kazakhstan and 61% in Uzbekistan. In both countries, the platform has evolved far beyond messaging into the de facto public square for politically consequential information. Yet reach does not always follow volume. Despite generating less than one-quarter of Kazakhstan’s narrative instances, Uzbekistani content produced 26% more total views – 17.7 million compared to 14 million in Kazakhstan – indicating significantly higher average engagement per post among Uzbek amplifiers.

A coherent anti-Western narrative machine

The 32 tracked narratives fall into six thematic clusters and reveal a clear Kremlin line: the West is aggressive and in terminal decline; its civil-society and diplomatic tools are instruments of destabilisation; its values are alien impositions; and Russia (and to a lesser extent China) offers a legitimate alternative. The imbalance is striking – 26 narratives delegitimise the West, while only six positively portray Russia or China.

The most widespread narrative, “Western power is collapsing,” appeared in 523 instances and generated 5.9 million views in Uzbekistan alone. Other high-volume themes include “Liberal elites are evil” and country-specific frames. In Kazakhstan, narratives such as “West destabilises Central Asia” and “(Western) Embassies destabilise governments” frequently reference the 2022 January events (Kantar) as a warning of Western-orchestrated “colour revolutions.” In Uzbekistan, global themes such as the Russia-Ukraine war and Western geopolitical competition dominate (44% and 34% of instances respectively).

Divergent national patterns

The report highlights important differences in how FIMI adapts to each country’s context. In Kazakhstan, amplification is highly concentrated and locally calibrated. The top five “high-risk” domestic accounts – media outlets and commentators that systematically echo FIMI narratives – account for 76% of all instances. These actors cover nearly the entire narrative spectrum, suggesting coordinated rather than organic activity. Content is overwhelmingly in Russian and tailored to domestic political sensitivities, including Western security partnerships and civil-society organisations.

In Uzbekistan, the picture is more distributed. Mainstream outlets and commentators, classified as “standard” amplifiers, drive most activity. Narratives are transnational and global in orientation but show deliberate localisation: 66% of the Uzbekistani FIMI dataset appears in the Uzbek language, reflecting external actors’ adaptation to the country’s rapid linguistic shift among those under 30.

Structural vulnerabilities

Both countries face growing resilience gaps, though the nature of the threat differs. In Kazakhstan, an additional ambient narrative – “Kazakhstan will face Ukraine’s fate” if it drifts westward – operates as implicit coercion without always appearing in the quantitative dataset.

Uzbekistan’s tightly controlled information environment offers partial protection but creates its own paradox: strong state oversight suppresses the very civil-society and independent-media capacity needed for genuine bottom-up resilience. Labour migration to Russia further moderates public sentiment; surveys show near-equal support for Russia and Ukraine among the population, driven by economic dependence. Russian provocations – such as Duma deputies questioning the legality of Soviet republics’ independence or suggesting possible military scenarios – prompt episodic institutional pushback, but the default response remains “managed silence.”

Policy recommendations and the way forward

The report does not stop at diagnosis. It offers targeted recommendations for governments, media organisations, civil society, and international partners. Governments should shift from diplomatic de-escalation and silence toward proactive public communication and investment in high-quality national-language content. Media outlets are urged to move beyond reactive fact-checking to platform-native resilience strategies, especially on Telegram and emerging channels such as TikTok. Civil-society actors should expand media-literacy programmes tailored to local contexts, while donors are encouraged to support long-term, locally owned initiatives that strengthen independent voices without triggering sovereignty concerns.

The study also flags emerging risks, including AI contamination of large language models by low-volume propaganda and the spread of deepfakes involving political figures.

As Central Asia sits at the intersection of Russian, Chinese, and Western interests, the integrity of its information space carries strategic weight well beyond national borders. The ENC report demonstrates that FIMI in the region is neither episodic nor accidental but sustained, adaptive, and structurally embedded. Without deliberate investment in societal resilience, these campaigns risk eroding public trust, polarising societies, and quietly constraining the foreign-policy autonomy that both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have worked hard to preserve.

In an age when information has become a domain of hybrid competition, the report serves as both a detailed warning and a practical roadmap. The resilience of Central Asian information ecosystems may ultimately prove decisive in determining whether the region can chart genuinely sovereign paths in the decade ahead.

Caption: An AI-generated illustrative image.