Russia is perfectly capable of trashing itself without anyone helping.

FWIW it seems Russia's trolling activities took a pretty significant hit after Prigozhin fell out of a window in 2023, as the "Internet Research Agency" was one of his ventures.

Probably just caused outsourcing to india and china.

It did. There are loads of "Polish" patriots on X located in India.

I think Europe hasn't developed this kind of political manipulation ability. Europe seems to operate in the mode where as long as the political institutions are still standing, everything is felt to be alright. US democrats also operate in this mode.

EU-based troll farms are for long time in RUnet already (i.e. FRF) along with EU-aligned russian language media who spread certain narratives.

It's the openness needed in western societies.

The lack of political will to create and fund covert offensive operations over the internet.

Russia has had this down for _years_, it's not illegal to hack non-Russian targets, so people do it. They have command and control systems where they can give out tasks like "find me vulnerabilities for Siemens XYZ hardware" and then a team will pick that up and do it.

They also practice infiltration, exfiltration and coordination with their attacks. Every kiddie can get in with maximum noise, the truly skilled ones get OUT without leaving any definite traces.

And I'm not talking out of my ass: https://youtu.be/jbIR7YVAYnc - I'm talking out of Marina Krotofil's ass, she's been investigating and dissecting this for a long time.