Disinformation, Trust, UK Democracy and Ukraine: Full House in Westminster for Launch of Landmark Report

Yesterday (14 January 2026) in the House of Commons – Westminster, nearly one hundred parliamentarians, diplomats, policy professionals and researchers filled Committee Room 9 for the launch of Resilience & Reconstruction’s brand new report, “Disinformation, UK democracy and attitudes toward Ukraine and Russia in the UK.” The event marked the culmination of six months of intensive qualitative fieldwork across the British electorate.​

In a packed room in Parliament

Hosted by Cameron Thomas, MP for Tewkesbury, who opened the event by underscoring both the high demand for this kind of research, and the timeliness of its publication. A broad spectrum of listeners joined to hear the report authors, Thomas Brayford, Steven Lacey and Dr Olha Mukha, present their findings. For participants and partners, the discussion underlined the fact that confronting Russian propaganda in the UK is now inseparable from defending UK democracy and sustaining public support for Ukraine.​

What the research shows

The report’s central finding is stark: disinformation in the UK rarely works by convincing people of a single lie; it works by exploiting a profound trust deficit in politics, media and institutions. Support for Ukraine is increasingly filtered through a lens of domestic grievances about fairness, decline and whether the system works at all, meaning that foreign policy arguments are now interpreted through the emotional weather of “broken Britain”. Rather than converting people into explicit Kremlin supporters, hostile narratives deepen confusion, polarisation and apathy, encouraging the feeling that “no one is telling the whole truth.”​

Fragmented realities and ambient disinformation

Drawing on eight focus groups and 64 participants across Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Reform UK, Your Party, conspiracy-oriented audiences, Tommy Robinson supporters and a control group actively consuming Russian propaganda, the research maps an exhausted, fragmented public sphere. It shows how Russian-aligned narratives migrate from the margins into mainstream debate via familiar domestic figures and algorithmic feeds, blending seamlessly with stories of local decline, two-tier justice and institutional failure. The report introduces the concept of ambient disinformation: not one viral fake, but the slow drip of tone, repetition and curated feeds that gradually reshape perceptions without people realising their “consumption can change [their] perception.”​

Implications for policymakers, politicians and communicators

The report makes clear that democratic resilience will not be rebuilt by fact-checking alone. The authors argue that responses must start with audiences, not messages: recognising how differently narratives land in communities that feel ignored, over-policed or left behind. Among the key recommendations are to link support for Ukraine with visible fairness, security and competence at home; to make “Russia pay” through the use of frozen assets; to treat civic and digital literacy as essential infrastructure; and to regulate systemic information harms, not just illegal content.​

Ukraine, democracy and shared responsibility

For many in the room, the war against disinformation in the UK is now understood as part of the same struggle as Ukraine’s defence on the battlefield. The report highlights how Russian myths – from NATO “provocation” to denial of Ukrainian statehood – have penetrated UK mainstream discourse, even as basic knowledge of Bucha, Mariupol or the abduction of Ukrainian children remains thin. Yet it also finds a public still open to honest, grounded engagement: people who are anxious, resentful and sometimes ashamed, but still willing to be persuaded when institutions begin with how Britain really feels instead of talking past it.​ Report available 

The full report, offering lawmakers, communicators and civil society a practical roadmap for rebuilding trust, protecting democratic life and sustaining principled support for Ukraine in a long war where truth itself has become a strategic asset.