From Tinder to TikTok

In the days after Russia attacked Ukraine in early 2022, a group of young Russian-speaking Lithuanians started using dating apps to connect with Russian soldiers inside Belarus and, after some flirty banter, casually discuss what they were hearing about the war. Another group took to Google Maps to post “reviews” of Moscow restaurants featuring not photos of the food, but news and photos of Russian bombardments. A third initiative provided local Russian-speakers with talking points and a list of civilian phone numbers inside Russia to cold-call. These approaches were creative and clever, and reflected the difficulties of overcoming censorship, digital barriers, and public apathy to reach Russian civilians and soldiers.

Three and a half years later, those improvised campaigns look increasingly like a blueprint. Europe now carries the burden for any Western effort to reach the Russian public. Washington is focused on its relationship with Moscow, and has halted longstanding US support for democratic actors and independent media in the region. It is actively seeking to end its support for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the storied Prague-based independent media outlet that has long provided Russians (and others) with reliable news in their own language.

In May, the EU approved an emergency provision of €5.5 million to RFE/RL; in the weeks ahead, it will have to decide whether to provide long-term operational support. Europe should absolutely keep RFE/RL alive—it remains a rare window into reality for millions of Russians—but it needs to do more than offer a lifeline to the media outlet. It needs a bold, complementary strategy to undercut Kremlin narratives by nurturing a new generation of creative, grassroots initiatives—the heirs of those early Lithuanian experiments.

Prompting more Russians to question what the Kremlin tells them—about the war, about the economy’s precarity, about the West’s intentions, about their leaders’ competence—would have enormous strategic value. Even a slight shift in Russian public opinion would be significant. At the very least, it might prompt Moscow to devote more of its enormous propaganda machine (whose annual public budget is more than $1.4 billion) to shoring up domestic opinion, leaving less firepower to direct at European audiences.

This will not be easy. The Kremlin employs digital and legal barriers to tightly control the Russian information space, and the pro-Kremlin content industrial complex is enormous. Moreover, Russians—like the rest of the world’s population—increasingly spend their online lives in polarized, algorithm-driven social media siloes, and exhibit high levels of distrust and apathy (both sentiments deliberately heightened by the Kremlin).

Breaking through in today’s digital swamp is exceedingly difficult, as any European politician can attest. News or policy arguments are unlikely to meaningfully move the needle, even when they reach voters. What is needed is a more subtle approach: undercutting dominant Kremlin narratives, while introducing alternative ones. This means sophisticated campaigns tailored to specific audiences, built around topics carefully selected for resonance, with language, humor, memes, and messengers that feel authentic. This requires not just technical expertise and platform savvy, but deep cultural fluency.

Fortunately, Europe has access to just that invaluable resource: large populations of motivated Russian-speaking digital natives who know instinctively how to engage effectively in these online spaces. This includes displaced Ukrainians, European-born Russian speakers, and—critically—large communities of pro-democratic Russian and Belarusian exiles. Collectively, they know how to connect with peers across the border in ways no Brussels official ever could.

What they need is support. The EU should launch a new foundation to provide rapid small- to medium sized grants to individuals, teams, and organizations. A lean staff could identify promising projects, incubate them, share lessons across teams, and adjust strategies in real time. The goal would be an ever-evolving constellation of experimental approaches as diverse as the Russian audiences themselves.

How might this look like in practice? Some efforts might build audiences or communities around non-political subjects, while slipping in real-world context to subtly make points (Why isn’t that new shoe line available in our city anymore?). Others might infiltrate apolitical online spaces (a gardening group on VKontakte; a gaming group on Discord) and introduce new conversational topics. Civic tech teams might develop AI tools, perhaps to counter the regime’s trolls (something one Belarusian team is already working to do in YouTube comments sections). Some projects might integrate digital tools with the real world—phone calls, text messages, and other ways to unexpectedly reach people offline.

All of this could be done for less than €10 million a year—a rounding error in Europe’s current defense budgets. And it would not require mimicking the Kremlin’s cynical disinformation practices. This strategic approach would be grounded in the optimistic conviction that the best antidote to the Kremlin’s propaganda is reality. Fewer lies, more unexpected dating app chats about what is really going on. That is how Europe can reach Russians in the TikTok era.