European Parliament resolution on Russia’s disinformation and historical falsification

European Parliament resolution of 23 January 2025 urges official European institutions to counter Russia’s disinformation and historical falsification to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine. The closure of International Memorial and Memorial Human Rights Defense Center, among other institutions, is mentioned as one of the acts of silencing historical debate in Russia. We republish the text of the resolution in full.

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on historical remembrance,

– having regard to the Charter of the United Nations,

– having regard to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC),

– having regard to the Geneva Conventions,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) and (4) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas on 24 February 2022, the Russian regime declared the start of a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine based on false claims that it needed to protect civilians;

B. whereas, in fact, since 24 February 2022 the Russian Federation has been waging an unprovoked, unjustified and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, in continuation of previous aggressions since 2014, and continues to persistently violate the principles of the UN Charter through its aggressive actions against the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine and to blatantly and grossly violate international humanitarian law, as established by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, in particular through the massive use of targeted attacks against the civilian population, residential areas and civilian infrastructure;

C. whereas the UN General Assembly, in its resolution of 2 March 2022, immediately qualified Russia’s war against Ukraine as an act of aggression in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, and, in its resolution of 14 November 2022, it recognised the need to hold the Russian Federation accountable for its war of aggression, as well as legally and financially responsible for its internationally wrongful acts, and that Russia should pay reparations for the injuries and damage caused;

D. whereas Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not an isolated act but a continuation of its imperialistic policy, which has included a war against Chechnya and military aggression against Georgia in 2008, and the occupation of Crimea and the start of a war in the Donbas in 2014;

E. whereas the start of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against neighbouring Ukraine was preceded by several public declarations by the president of the Russian Federation seeking to justify its use of force by means of historical revisionism, false claims and illegitimate demands for the recognition of its exclusive interests in Ukraine and other neighbouring countries;

F. whereas the Russian regime has been making widespread use of disinformation, including based on distorted historical arguments, and foreign information manipulation and interference in an attempt to justify its crime of aggression, to incite the Russian population to support its illegal regime and illegal war of aggression against neighbouring Ukraine, to interfere in the democratic processes of other countries and to reduce support among their populations for continued international assistance and support for Ukraine against Russia’s war of aggression; whereas the Russian regime denies Ukraine’s distinct national identity, falsely claiming it as part of the Russian world (‘Russkiy mir’), a narrative rooted in imperialistic ideology; whereas Russia is demolishing Holodomor memorials and restoring demolished monuments to Lenin in the occupied territories of Ukraine;

G. whereas Russia has not only failed to acknowledge the unforgivable initial role of the Soviet Union in the early stages of World War II, for example through the 1939 Treaty of Non-Aggression between Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) and its secrets protocols, commonly referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, in which both totalitarian regimes conspired to divide Europe into exclusive spheres of influence, and failed to assume its responsibility for the many atrocities and mass crimes committed in territories occupied by the Soviet Union, but the current Russian regime has also instrumentalised history and created a cult of ‘victory’ around World War II to ideologically mobilise citizens and manipulate them into supporting an illegal war of aggression;

H. whereas Russia has developed a growing disinformation campaign of historical revisionism for the purpose of denying Ukraine its national identity, statehood and very existence, and with the aim of justifying its claims to exclusive spheres of influence, which is reminiscent of how the Soviet Union agreed with Nazi Germany to invade and occupy parts of Poland and Romania as well as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; whereas today, Russia poses a particular threat to Poland and the Baltic States and their sovereignty through this type of historical revisionism;

I. whereas Victory Day, celebrated annually on 9 May, has been turned by the current Russian regime into a tool of war propaganda in Russia, by exploiting the narrative of the ‘liberation of Europe from Nazism’ and thus ignoring the subsequent Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and the subjugation of central Europe; whereas this narrative of liberation from Nazism is being used today in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine;

J. whereas in some Member States, communist symbols, as well as the symbols of the ongoing Russian aggression, are prohibited by law; whereas since 2009, 23 August has been commemorated across the EU as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of all Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes; whereas since 2003, Parliament has held an annual commemoration for the victims of mass Soviet deportations;

1. Reiterates its condemnation, in the strongest possible terms, of Russia’s unprovoked, illegal and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine; calls on Russia to immediately terminate all military activities in Ukraine and to completely and unconditionally withdraw all forces, proxies and military equipment from the entire internationally recognised territory of Ukraine, to end its forced deportations of Ukrainian civilians and to release all detained and deported Ukrainians, particularly children;

2. Rejects the various claims made by the Russian regime as futile attempts to justify an illegal war of aggression that constitutes a blatant violation of the UN Charter and of the responsibility of the Russian Federation as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to maintain peace and stability and that was immediately recognised as such by the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with an overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly; recalls that no consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military, historic or otherwise, may serve as a justification for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine;

3. Condemns the Russian regime’s systematic falsification and use of distorted historical arguments, such as those related to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in its attempt to manipulate Russian public opinion into supporting criminal actions such as the illegal war of aggression against neighbouring Ukraine, to undermine international support and assistance for Ukraine and to erase Ukraine’s distinct cultural and historical identity; denounces Russia’s claim that it is entitled to zones of exclusive interest at the expense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states as incompatible with international law;

4. Condemns the Russian Federation’s failure to establish accountability for Soviet crimes and its deliberate obstruction of historical research by denying access to and closing Soviet archives, as well as the fact that it has enacted legislation criminalising the truthful portrayal of Soviet and Russian crimes and persecuted civil society organisations investigating Soviet crimes, and has glorified Stalinist totalitarianism and re-created its methods; maintains that impunity and the lack of factually accurate historical and public debate and education has contributed to the current Russian regime’s ability to revive imperialist policies and instrumentalise history for its criminal purposes; condemns the persecution of civil society organisations investigating Soviet crimes or the crimes of the current regime, including the liquidation of International Memorial, the Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre, and the Moscow Helsinki Group, as well as the forced closure of the Sakharov Centre;

5. Recalls that the deliberate attacks of the Russian Federation on the civilian population of Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the use of torture, sexual violence and rape as weapons of war, the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian citizens to the territory of the Russian Federation, the forced transfer and adoption of Ukrainian children, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights constitute war crimes for which all perpetrators must be held accountable;

6. Reiterates, therefore, its full support for the ongoing investigation by the Prosecutor of the ICC into the situation in Ukraine based on alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide; welcomes Ukraine’s formal accession to the ICC as of 1 January 2025 as an important contribution to international efforts to establish accountability for serious international crimes; calls for the EU to make further diplomatic efforts to encourage the ratification of the Rome Statute and all its amendments globally;

7. Furthermore also reiterates its call for the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate and prosecute the crime of aggression committed by the leadership of the Russian Federation against Ukraine; reiterates its call on the Commission, the Council and the European External Action Service to provide all political, financial and practical support necessary for the establishment of a special tribunal; expresses its full support for the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in Ukraine, based in The Hague and supporting the ongoing efforts of the Joint Investigation Team, as a first concrete step towards the establishment of the special tribunal;

8. Calls strongly for the EU and its Member States to further increase and coordinate their efforts, including with like-minded partners, to promptly and rigorously counter Russian disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference in order to protect the integrity of their democratic processes and strengthen the resilience of European societies, inter alia by actively promoting media literacy and by supporting quality media and professional journalism, in particular investigative journalism that uncovers Russian propaganda, its methods and networks, and by supporting research into new hybrid influence technologies;

9. Calls for the EU to expand its sanctions against Russian media outlets conducting disinformation and information manipulation campaigns supporting and justifying Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and calls on the Member States to swiftly and thoroughly implement these sanctions and to dedicate sufficient resources to effectively addressing this hybrid warfare; calls for the EU and the Member States to step up their support for the independent Russian media in exile in order to enable diverse voices in the Russian-language media;

10. Expresses deep concern about the recent announcements from social media companies’ leadership concerning relaxing their rules on fact-checking and moderation and how this will further enable Russia’s disinformation campaign around the world; calls on the Commission and the Member States to strictly enforce the Digital Services Act in response to these announcements by Meta and earlier by X, including as an important part of the fight against Russian disinformation;

11. Calls on EU citizens to critically evaluate information by questioning its origins and intentions, particularly when it pertains to narratives linked to Russia, and to crosscheck facts using diverse and reliable sources to resist attempts at manipulation by foreign malign actors;

12. Condemns Moscow’s exploitation of Orthodox religion for geopolitical purposes, notably through the instrumentalisation of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) as a tool to influence and exert control over Orthodox populations in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and other countries;

13. Responds to the statement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of 2 May 2023 on the ideology of ‘Ruscism’ by condemning the nationalist imperialist ideology, policy and practices of the current Russian regime; stresses the incompatibility of this ideology and policy and these practices with international law and European values;

14. Believes that Russia’s attempts to misrepresent, revise and distort the history of Ukraine undermine the collective memory and identity of Europe as a whole and represent a threat to historical truth, democratic values and peace in Europe; calls on the Member States, therefore, to invest more in education on and research into the common history of Europe and European remembrance, and to support projects that promote a better understanding of the impact of the division of Europe during the Cold War; expresses its support for the building of a pan-European memorial in Brussels for the victims of the 20th century totalitarian regimes; regrets the continued use of symbols of totalitarian regimes in public spaces and calls for an EU-wide ban on the use of both Nazi and Soviet communist symbols as well as symbols of Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine;

15. Expresses its wish for the EU and its Member States to promote better knowledge and understanding of the human suffering of Europeans inflicted by the Soviet regime during the 20th century; in this respect, calls for remembrance and respect for the victims of Soviet crimes, such as the mass deportations, including of the Crimean Tatar people and from the Baltic countries, the Gulag system, the Holodomor, massacres such as the Katyn massacre, and the Upper Silesian tragedy;

16. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Council, the Commission, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the President, Government and Parliament of Ukraine, and the Russian institutions.