Western societies find themselves at the very center of a cognitive war. This is a new kind of confrontation that goes beyond traditionally understood military operations, as it is waged in the human mind.

The list of accusations that the Kremlin has directed at Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Donbas is a long one. It has also included claims that in the eastern part of the country there reportedly exists a network of secret laboratories producing biological weapons banned by international conventions. Russia regularly makes similar accusations not only against Ukraine—if one traces reports from the past several years, it becomes clear that, depending on its propaganda needs, Russian officials ‘discover’ such facilities in Georgia, as well as in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, and more recently in Armenia. An essential element in these reports is the conviction that behind all of this, there are some dark forces from the West: the United States, NATO, or the European Union. Interestingly, accusations concerning these alleged laboratories tend to appear when Moscow’s relations with its neighbors become strained. Such was the case with Georgia, the war in Donbas, and the full-scale war in Ukraine. When the latter began, there were reports that the Americans had moved some of the laboratories from Ukraine to… Poland and the Baltic states. Information of this kind circulates across various communication channels, also in Polish language.

Invisible Battle

This is a regular tactics of the Russian security services, as no evidence has ever been presented that such laboratories existed in these countries. Such reports serve to inflame anti-American, anti-NATO, or more broadly anti-Western moods. At the same time, they function as a tool for delegitimizing the governments of specific states. Psychological mechanisms are at play here, exploiting fears related to biological weapons and their alleged testing on humans. The topic is regularly brought up and used for disinformation, manipulation, and shaping public moods and worldviews. This is on of the ways how cognitive warfare is manifested. Although this is a battle that leaves behind no shattered divisions or destroyed cities, its effects can be equally devastating.

As Sun Tzu, Chinese military strategist, once wrote: “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” The key to success is breaking the opponent’s will. This can be achieved by disrupting their perception, forcing them to adopt one’s own point of view, and instilling the belief that resistance is pointless. In other words, by messing with their head. Sun Tzu’s idea can be treated as the shortest possible definition of cognitive warfare. It is a new kind of confrontation that goes beyond traditionally understood military operations. “Some describe it as hacking the human mind,” notes Agnieszka Szczygielska, PhD, an academic at the Military Faculty of the War Studies University (ASzWoj), and adds: “It’s more of a takeover of cognitive processes to win the war before conventional means of combat are employed.” This is the kind of war for minds that Russia is waging against the West; the fundamental problem for the democratic world remains how to defend against such actions.

How to Destroy Enemy’s Morale

The main weapon in this battle is information distributed through traditional mass media and social media, but the emergence of digital platforms has created an entirely new situation. “Their users can build networks of connections and circulate specific narratives at a pace never seen before. What’s more, for many people, especially young ones, these platforms remain the only source of knowledge about the world,” explains Col Robert Reczkowski, PhD, Deputy Director of the Doctrine and Training Centre of the Polish Armed Forces (CDiS SP). Such recipients are particularly susceptible to manipulation.

A further threat lies in the fact that modern systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) not only make it easier to produce fabricated content, such as deepfakes (e.g. fake videos that use the likeness of real people), but also support analytical work. They divide potential addressees into groups, create their psychological and ideological profiles, and indicate which content is most suitable for them. By identifying our vulnerabilities, they can attack more precisely. In this way, narratives useful to the manipulator are introduced into circulation.

Compared with traditional information or psychological warfare, cognitive warfare is often seen as a comprehensive form of influence operation, because it targets the most fundamental level: the values that shape human actions. The matter is serious, and in documents prepared for NATO there appears the idea of recognizing the cognitive domain as another, new area of competition, alongside the existing operational domains: land, sea, air, cyber, and space.

Cognitive warfare can take many forms, but what links all activities related to it is the destruction of the opponent’s morale. In the modern world, this is no longer limited to the army, as entire societies are becoming the target. It is important, however, to distinguish between cognitive, hybrid, informational, and psychological warfare. “Cognitive warfare involves shaping beliefs, convictions, and opinions to build specific awareness within a state, society, or nation. Hybrid warfare, on the other hand, encompasses all actions at the intersection of the civilian and military areas, aimed at achieving a political goal. It employs kinetic, economic, legal, informational, and psychological resources, as well as cyberspace activities, although it also includes elements of cognitive operations,” explains Agnieszka Szczygielska, PhD.

Cognitive warfare can therefore be part of hybrid warfare, but it can also function as a separate domain where actions are carried out independently with various tools and methods. These include primarily information operations, psychological operations, and activities in cyberspace. Agnieszka Szczygielska, PhD, notes that the first relate mainly to controlling information – its flow and transmission. The second focus on influencing emotions, and cyberspace is the area that connects all these spheres. Moreover, information and psychological operations are usually conducted at an individual, emotional, and often incidental level, whereas cognitive warfare concerns collective cognitive patterns and is waged from a long-term perspective. Actions in this domain often begin several years before a given event in order to program the way a society thinks. Kamil Basaj, an expert from the Cyber Defense Forces Component Command (DKWOC), also emphasizes this long-term aspect: “These are multi level operations that are not planned in short term cycles.” According to his analysis of Russian documents and operations, the processes used to assess the effectiveness of such activities are measured in ten year cycles. The example of the alleged laboratories suggests that some elements of these operations may be carried out for decades.

Words That Shoot

Cognitive operations are one of the key components of the new type of warfare – the same one that General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation of the Armed Forces, spoke about 12 years ago. “At the Moscow Academy of Military Sciences, he referred to the role of non-kinetic and kinetic factors in modern warfare. He set the ratio between them at four to one. Just two years later, Sergey Shoigu, then Russian Defense Minister, emphasized the importance of the former even more, saying: ‘Words also shoot,’” recalls Col Reczkowski, PhD. During this time, Russia systematically expanded and strengthened the machinery responsible for psychological and information operations. Spending in this area began to rise sharply before the invasion of Georgia in 2008. Fourteen years later, it reached 1.5 billion dollars – 30% more than a decade earlier. According to the Center for Eastern Studies, in just the first quarter of 2022, when Russian tanks were crossing the Ukrainian border, state media received 200% more funding for their activities than the year before. The biggest beneficiary of the changes proved to be the RT channel (formerly Russia Today), whose task is to project Kremlin propaganda beyond Russia’s borders. A steady flow of funds also goes to Tass and Sputnik news agencies.

Russian narratives are spread by politicians, diplomats, scholars from Kremlin-linked institutions, foundations, bloggers, and even clergy of the Orthodox Church. The internet plays a particularly important role. Russia created a troll factory whose employees initiate and fuel conflicts on Western social media every day. They inject fake news into the web and, through carefully selected comments, ignite and escalate ideological clashes, seeking to deepen existing divisions within societies. The patterns of these activities are developed in military centers. Within the army itself, structures dedicated to cognitive warfare are also being expanded. “In the spring of 2025, a completely new military specialization was created in Russia – ‘informational confrontation’ – and special subunits trained for information-psychological warfare were established within the military units,” notes Col Robert Reczkowski, PhD.

One example of Russian disinformation efforts is the Operation Döppelganger (German for double, clone). Its starting point was the creation of a bot network on the X platform. “The bot accounts were created in various parts of the world. Initially, the posts there were about cryptocurrencies. At the selected moment, the bots switched to Polish, pretending to be concerned citizens,” explains Prof. Dariusz Jemielniak of the Department of Management in Networked Society at Kozminski University (ALK). The posts touched on topics such as Poland’s alleged excessive entanglement in EU interests or the supposed catastrophe that Ukrainian immigrants would bring to the country. Each post included a link to fake articles published under the banner of Polityka magazine or Polish Radio.

Another example of a large-scale operation from recent months is the incident involving Russian drones that entered Poland from the east during the night of September 9-10. The attack was not limited to Poland’s airspace. As the army repeatedly shot down unmanned aircraft, an active disinformation campaign raged online. According to Krzysztof Gawkowski, Polish Minister for Digital Affairs, Russian bot networks were activated even before dawn. “The number of posts and comments spreading pro-Kremlin narratives tripled that day,” says Prof. Dariusz Jemielniak. The dominant message claimed that the drone attack was a Ukrainian provocation aimed at dragging Poland and NATO into a war with Russia. The alleged proof: the drones’ range – too short for them to have been launched from Russian territory. None of the proponents of this theory mentioned that, according to radar data, most of the drones had entered from Belarus…

In the end, Poland emerged from this confrontation unscathed. Government and presidential officials consistently stated that Russia was responsible for the attacks and that its actions posed a threat to Poland’s interests. According to the European Analytical Collective Res Futura, in the first days after the attack, 41% of users of major social media platforms supported this opinion. Nearly 24%, however, spoke the language of the Kremlin… “Unfortunately, internal actors played a negative role here. This doesn’t apply only to agents of influence. Sometimes individuals with no obvious links to Russia also adopted narratives aligning with then Kremlin messaging,” notes Michał Marek, PhD, Head of the External Threat Analysis Team at NASK (Polish national research institute). Responsibility for the strike was questioned by some politicians and niche media outlets. The entire operation served to generate informational noise and smuggle in theses that form a permanent axis of Russian propaganda and information warfare: shifting responsibility away from Russia for what is happening and placing the blame on its main adversary – Ukraine.

A Lie Repeated a Thousand Times

“The fundamental assumption of Soviet propaganda specialists was the belief that, in principle, truth does not exist. Instead, what forms in people’s minds is merely an image of the world. This image is the product of a cognitive process,” explains Kamil Basaj. By understanding the mechanics of information processing in the human mind – research that had also been conducted over many years – the Soviets reached conclusions that became the basis for planning manipulative operations. “They recognized that every individual and every social group has its own unique worldview that can be described and measured. This makes it possible to create a model of how a given social group perceives the world. Soviet researchers called this the model of subjectivism,” the DKWOC expert notes.

The Soviets concluded that the cognitive process could be permanently disrupted through informational actions, and they tested various methods of manipulation. “The goal was to classify deceptive and disinformation operations in such a way that ready-made operational models could be created,” emphasizes Basaj. He points to another aspect: the Soviets observed that the cognitive processes occurring in the human mind are, in a sense, flawed. “If the human brain is subjected to continuous, directed, and controlled informational influence, the knowledge and data resources, of which the brain is not normally conscious of, absorb this influence. The more diverse the manipulative information, the greater the brain’s susceptibility to making decisions that are irrational but aligned with the adversary’s intent. In a way, this is a scientific, cognitive explanation of the very common saying that a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth,” the expert concludes. This means that flooding the human mind with information that disrupts the reasoning process increases an adversary’s capacity to influence. It also weakens the response to Russian provocations. Repeated unusual situations and violations lead to their normalization and familiarization, blurring the line between an act of aggression and an incident. “This is a classic tactic from the arsenal of cognitive warfare, because it does not involve a physical attack. It can be considered a weapon of ambiguity, as it leads to differing interpretations of phenomena, events, and situations,” explains Agnieszka Szczygielska, PhD.

Playing on Emotions

The Russians tailor their narrative strategies depending on the country they are targeting. “In Poland, Russian propaganda finds fertile soil in issues over which Polish society is divided. This applies especially to relations with Ukraine and attitudes toward migrants,” explains Prof. Dariusz Jemielniak. Meanwhile, Kamil Basaj emphasizes that Russian disinformation frequently relies on strong emotions – they serve as a means of capturing attention and increasing the effectiveness of messaging. Since fear is among the strongest of emotions, it is also the one used most often. “The Russians therefore frighten people with nuclear annihilation, war, provocation, retaliation,” the expert notes. At the same time, they construct an image of their own country as one that must constantly defend itself against foreign aggression. This forces Western societies, including the Polish public, to consider how far they can go in shaping their defense policies without exposing themselves to so-called retaliation. The result is a shift of responsibility from the aggressor to the victim, as the countries, which experienced Russian provocations, must justify their own actions.

By continually provoking and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable, uncertainty is triggered in Western societies, weakening their trust in NATO, the European Union, or their own governments. The response to constant violations of international order tends to be protests, expressions of concern, and similar gestures rather than specific action. “All these fuel emotions – fear, uncertainty, anger at the ‘passiveness of the West.’ In this way, society becomes divided and conflicted, attitudes become polarized, extreme solutions are favored, genuine authorities are discredited, and false narratives are introduced,” summarizes Agnieszka Szczygielska, PhD.

In such conditions, toxic rhetoric spreads easily, harmful theses are promoted, and the reputations of individuals and states are damaged. Russia does not create divisions within societies targeted by cognitive operations, but it exploits and deepens the ones that already exist. “Cognitive actions act like a catalyst that brings to the surface everything that antagonizes and polarizes us,” the expert notes. Sowing doubt or undermining trust in state and international institutions weakens social cohesion and generates confusion – something that can be easily exploited by offering one’s own solutions and interpretations, for example regarding who is responsible for specific acts of aggression.

Knowledge as a Weapon

Fighting Russian disinformation and propaganda is difficult – partly because freedom of speech is one of the fundamental values of Western democracies, and the media are not state-controlled. “While it is possible to block Russian channels that spread disinformation, it is hard to imagine security services taking control of social media platforms owned by big-tech companies,” admits Col Robert Reczkowski, PhD. Yet the West is not defenseless. It does not have to focus solely on minimizing the consequences of Russian strikes. At the NATO level, structures dedicated to conducting cognitive warfare are being expanded, although their scope and methods remain classified. “Similar efforts are also underway within our armed forces. Nevertheless, the system remains to some extent dispersed and requires centralization, at least to achieve a synergistic effect between military and civilian components,” Col Robert Reczkowski notes.

Modern technology is also useful in the fight against disinformation. “By using machine learning algorithms, one can analyze the content of social media posts and articles to detect misleading or false information,” explains Prof. Dariusz Jemielniak. Michał Marek, PhD, from NASK adds that, to limit the spread of Russian disinformation, it may be worth introducing legal regulations – for example, including the term agent of influence in the Penal Code and penalizing the deliberate dissemination of disinformation. In Western states, condemning certain statements is risky, as it automatically evokes associations with censorship. However, as experts strongly emphasize, freedom of speech cannot mean the right to spread lies – especially those that attack the foundations of society and the state. The key to winning this war is education. “We must strengthen social resilience. Schools should teach how to verify information using reliable sources. At the state level, a coordinated communication strategy must be developed and trust in public institutions rebuilt,” emphasizes Michał Marek, PhD.

Western societies are facing a challenge they have never encountered before. Everything indicates that Russia’s cognitive warfare activities will not diminish in the near future. Decision-makers in the Kremlin know they are militarily weaker than NATO, so they will do everything they can to weaken the West by other means. For what purpose? Perhaps this is a long-term prelude to a traditional military operation. Or perhaps the Russians simply hope that through influence operations they will manage to gain control over Central and Eastern Europe – believing that by weakening democratic mechanisms, they can pave the way for governments willing to pursue pro-Kremlin policies. Many scenarios are possible. One thing, however, remains certain: the battle for hearts and minds is ongoing.