Pedro Sánchez pointed to Russia in the midst of the Ceuta crisis. He did so while the opposition demanded explanations for the mass entry of migrants and the government sought to regain control of the border. The direct reference to actors like Russia or Israel seemed, at least on the surface, far removed from the conflict.
It remained to be seen whether that mention, echoed immediately by the Russian Embassy in Spain, had substance or if Russia had entered the debate as a way to shift attention to another realm. A report prepared on August 18 by EK Strategic Communications Center, to which Agenda Pública has had exclusive access, provides elements to help answer that question.
In line with information handled by EU sources, the document does not prove that Russia provoked the Ceuta crisis, but it proves a certain degree of involvement. From the center they contend that, when the episode began, there was already in Spain an infrastructure of Russian influence capable of taking advantage of it politically.
“The document does not prove that Russia provoked the Ceuta crisis, but it proves a certain degree of involvement”
According to EK Strategic Communications Center, the digital networks linked to Russia exploited the migration crisis to feed political panic, discredit the Spanish government and present Europe as weak, divided and unable to defend its borders. A modus operandi usual in the Russian case. In this sense, the report gives support to the idea of a Russian dimension to what happened in Ceuta, but the evidence provided does not allow pinning the origin of the crisis on Moscow.
The new frontier of hybrid warfare
Across eleven pages, the collected information describe a framework formed by media, Telegram channels, compatriot organizations, cultural associations, religious structures, political networks and digital actors with varying degrees of autonomy. Its operation does not require daily instructions from the Kremlin. According to sources, it is enough for those actors to share certain narratives and have channels capable of introducing them quickly into the public debate.
Many of the factors evident in the early hours of the mass migrant entry into Ceuta aligned with the capabilities of the Russian network. Immigration had already been a politically explosive issue, and the mass arrival of people through an external European Union border added images of disorder and security concerns. Also—by figures in Moroccan politics—there was a discussion about Spanish sovereignty.
The main narratives used during 2026 fall into three broad families: the antagonism toward the EU and NATO; messages against Ukraine; and the association between immigration, insecurity and the “Islamization of Europe.” The Ceuta campaign has become one of the most relevant cases for this third narrative.
Within that repertoire several ideas repeat, such as that Brussels favors open borders or that national governments have lost control. There is also talk of European weakness as a structural element, of alleged attacks by immigration on national identity or of the elites’ inability to protect their citizens.
An entire infrastructure behind Telegram
As is customary, these organizational networks achieve greater amplification through their activity on Telegram.
The EK Strategic Communications Center, specialized in analyzing Russian propaganda and disinformation, identifies organizations in this country or linked to the diaspora scattered across Spain that, according to the report, maintain connections with Russian soft power instruments, i.e., structures intended to project cultural, political and social influence abroad. Among them appear Russkiy Mir, a foundation dedicated to promoting the Russian language and culture in other countries; Rossotrudnichestvo, the Russian federal agency responsible for relations with compatriots abroad and international humanitarian cooperation; and Pravfond, a foundation funded by the Russian state to support compatriots living outside the country. In that network, there are cultural organizations, schools, compatriot associations, religious structures and networks capable of mobilizing people for certain public acts.
One of the main nodes would be the so-called “Immortal Regiment” in Madrid. Its coordinator, Viktoria Samoilova, was personally praised by Vladimir Putin in 2025 and the report links her to a network that connects compatriot organizations, the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian public diplomacy structures.
Connections also reach the political arena, with a notable feature: the networks described are not limited to a single ideological space. That is, they can exploit channels on both the left and the right. On the left, the report places RED, Canal Red and certain figures from the Podemos space. It also notes the continuity of narratives against NATO, Western military spending and European policy towards Ukraine, as well as the growing capacity of some of these platforms to reach Spanish and Latin American audiences.
“The networks described are not limited to a single ideological space: they can exploit voices on both the left and the right”
On the far right, Paladins—an sovereigntist network founded in Saint Petersburg with the participation of Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeev, founder of the Tsargrad media group, and Alexander Dugin, political philosopher and geopolitician behind Eurasianism and the Russkiy Mir concept. The report also documents the presence of Spanish organizations with this ideology in its orbit. During the Ceuta crisis, its Telegram channel urged nationalists to “take the situation into their own hands,” and the Democracia Nacional profile spread that message.
It is in this way that messages aimed at ideologically different audiences can converge to the same effect.
From state media to fragmentation
Soon after the invasion of Ukraine began, the European Union responded by banning RT and Sputnik. That decision curbed two of the most relevant channels in this framework, but experts question whether Russian influence today depends on a handful of state media.
Nowadays, content can circulate through far less visible channels: material from those and other Russian outlets moves to Telegram channels, seemingly independent pages, aggregators and finally political accounts with their own audiences. Therefore, blocking a platform or a single media outlet does not necessarily cut that distribution chain.
According to the report, Spanish versions of Pravda published more than 150,000 pieces in their first six months. Of all of them, 40% came from Russian state media and nearly 60% from specialized Telegram channels. The center explains that this network has versions in Catalan, Basque, and Galician, in addition to Spanish.
The scale and operation described do not entirely fit the idea of propaganda aimed at “convincing an audience.” In this case, the distribution infrastructure and the dangers it poses—accelerating reactions to events like Ceuta or amplifying insecurities and prompting different groups to interpret these events through frames implanted by a foreign actor—are also key.
Ceuta as a test case
Ceuta’s interest extends beyond Spain because it is a crisis that could be extrapolated to a European one. The arrival of migrants could be used to attack the Spanish government and tie to the loss of border control. And the sovereignty dispute, also supported from Morocco, fed nationalist discourses and security concerns. From there, it could expand into broader criticism of Brussels and the idea that European integration or alignment with the West reduces Spain’s ability to defend its own interests.
This process does not require all pieces to be coordinated from a single center—such as Moscow, Tel Aviv, or others. Influence can operate through different actors who share messages, sources and partial objectives and who, in a crisis, end up pushing the debate in a similar direction.
What should the Government explain now
The Russian dimension pointed to by Sánchez requires more than a mention of Moscow. If the Government believes there was an influence operation during Ceuta’s crisis, it should explain how it worked, which organizations were involved and what part can be linked to Russian structures.
These are complex questions to answer, because, for example, sharing pro-Russian positions does not by itself constitute a security problem. This is part of the political freedom of a democracy. Now, the situation changes when networks linked to a foreign power exist and are capable of deliberately exploiting a domestic crisis to weaken democratic institutions or European cohesion.
“If the Government considers that there was an influence operation during the Ceuta crisis, it should explain how it worked”
The Ceuta crisis allows observing that possibility in a concrete case: an episode of own origin could be quickly absorbed by existing influence networks and reinterpreted within broader narratives about immigration, sovereignty, Brussels and the West. Russia may not have sparked the blaze in Ceuta, but when it began to burn, it had the fuel ready.
