Weaponising the Unrest: How Russia Exploits Europe’s Political Divisions
On Sunday, 18 October, France woke up to what the press described as a hungover from a day of unrest. The cost-of-living protests from the previous day, had drawn more than 550,000 people, according to the Interior Ministry, and 800,000 according to the organisers. By the end of the day, 1,200 people were arrested and 150 police officers were injured. In Limoges, fire destroyed much of the 19th-century town, while AFP reporters described scenes more intense than those witnessed during the 2023 riots or the gilets jaunes protestsof 2018-2019. The unrest was not confined to France: Milan, Bologna and Brussels also witnessed clashes, whileTirana entered itsfifth consecutive day of confrontations between protesters andpolice. In Lisbon, by contrast, tens of thousands marched through the streets and pitched tents on Rossio square, with no reports of comparable violence.
The violence was real, as were the grievances behind the protests. However, as images of destruction dominated news cycle, the original demands faded from view, creating opportunities for political actors to shape the narrative and for Russia to exploit existing divisions. There is no evidence that Russia orchestrated the unrest, but it has demonstrated clear attempts to weaponise the protests through fabricated reports, amplification by Russian officials, and the wider geopolitical context of a changing U.S. approach to Ukraine.
The Politics of Images: Unrest as Electoral Ammunition
The first battle over the unrest was domestic, as political leaders sought to assign responsibility for the violence and frame its implications. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu attributed the riots to groups acting at the "very clear instigation of the ultra-left" and told La France to choose between the Republic and the rioters. Marine Le Pen accused Jean-Luc Mélenchon's deputies of legitimising violence and pushing the country into chaos, and Mélenchon replied that the government had gambled on the situation deteriorating. Recent polls suggest the two could meet in the presidential runoff six months from now, so each accusation doubles as a campaign message. From Washington, JD Vance posted a video of the burning Limoges town hall and blamed immigration and progressive policy. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni condemned "hooligans who exploit demonstrations to sow chaos", while Milan's centre-left mayor accepted that the reasons for the protests were understandable.
Each reading is available because of the choice of footage. On social media, the feeds also carried violence by the state against the protesters. For example, a 17-year-old in Saint-Étienne lost a hand to a police grenade. Images of the police charging and beating protesters made the rounds of the internet, triggering a report from the UN and so did videos of French police officers eager to beat protesters and using racist insults against them. Human Rights Watch denounced the excessive use of force against minors in the student protests. The protesters distanced themselves from the violence of some groups, while the police do not publicly acknowledge their own.
From Fabricated Reports to Geopolitical Leverage
Russia’s exploitation of the unrest began before the violence peaked, combining fabricated reports targeting French audiences with public statements that turned the unfolding crisis into an opportunity for geopolitical messaging. Senator Alexei Pushkov told his Telegram followers on 18 October that France was burning and that Emmanuel Macron should look for his enemies elsewhere, as reported by the Russian state outlet.
Russia did not need to start the fire to exploit it, and its influence activity had begun before 17 October. During the first days of the month, when the protests were still centred around student demands, NewsGuard documented 20 fabricated reports in two days from Matryoshka, a Russian influence campaign that imitates established media outlets. They included a fake AFP report, claiming that the Pope had cut short a visit to France following an attack by Muslim schoolchildren, a fake Deutsche Welle report alleging that 54 teachers had been killed, and a fake Le Monde report cliaiming that Gabriel Attal had funded the riots. NewsGuard assessed that the Russian campaign targeted France because of its support for Ukraine and exploited the unrest to deepen distrust of the authorities, although the fabrications drew little traffic.
The wider geopolitical context offers a separate, but related, source of Russian advantage. On 9 October, Trump announced a diesel deal with Putin, and the next day he suggested Ukraine should "get a new leader who can make a deal". On 16 October he waived key provisions of the Russia sanctions law he had signed a month earlier. These developments do not establish a connection between the U.S. policy decisions and the protests, but they do illustrate the strategic environment in which domestic instability can become an additional complication for European governments already facing uncertainty over continued support for Ukraine. Russia may benefit from that distraction, but strategic benefit alone is not evidence of operational involvement.
On 17 October, as the riots unfolded, Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin's investment envoy, responded to a post by the UK commentator David Vance, who claimed that panic in Brussels and Kyiv was real and that Donald Trump would no longer let Volodymyr Zelenskyy continue the war. Dmitriev replied in a singleword: "Checkmate", and TASS promptly reported the exchange. This was a vivid demonstration of how Russian officials could incorporate a European domestic crisis into a broader narrative of Western weakness and diminishing support for Ukraine.
This Russian method is well-documented. During the Black Lives Matter mobilisation of 2015-2017, the Internet Research Agency operated personas posing as Black activists and targeted African American audiences with 96 percent of its YouTube content concerning Black Lives Matter and police brutality. When a pro-police backlash emerged, it also promoted Blue Lives Matter material, appealing to opposing constituencies and reinforcing existing divisions. The operation did not create the underlying grievances. As Renée DiResta, one of the authors of the reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, observed, it "leveraged pre-existing, legitimate grievances wherever they could".
Russia works with the fractures it finds. Treating every fire as a Russian operation hands the Kremlin a claim of omnipotence and gives governments an alibi, including the unrest that has shacked Europe.
Beyond the Images: Separating Exploitation from Orchestration
Strategic communication requires the discipline to step back from the heat of the footage and read the wider picture. The immediate question is who broke what in Limoges or Milan, the strategic question is what else happened in the same week. Protests broke out in five countries at once, amidst a long cycle of ongoing and upcoming national elections, and the U.S. changing its course on Ukraine. A Europe absorbed by unrest and political polarisation will find it harder to respond to that shift, while Russia gains time and continues striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
None of this makes the protests illegitimate. Alberto Alemanno of HEC Paris describes several simultaneous movements driven by shared grievances over education, living costs and graduate prospects. However, excess of violence on screens raises two questions. The first concerns journalists: whether their duty is to sensationalise events or to reflect the diversity of peaceful protesters across social classes and professions. The second concerns the information evironment: whether the volume of destruction footage was amplified by coordinated accounts, artificial promotion, or platforms whose recommender systems reward polarising content. And finally, what if the broader picture is that these protests are being used to polarise public opinion and to divide European countries precisely when they need to respond to the sudden change of course in Washington? The fabricated reports demonstrate that such attempts exist. Platform data will show whether they succeeded.
Photo: E. Fowler/ZUMA/SIPA via 20 minutes
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By Louis Sandro Zarandia, Associate Expert of CSC, SSI