The paradox of a successful operation that failed
On the evening of October 4, 2025, as confetti fell at ANO party headquarters in Prague, two very different stories were unfolding. The first was a political earthquake: billionaire Andrej Babiš had returned to power with 34.5 percent of the vote, ending four years of pro-Western governance under Petr Fiala. The second story was quieter but no less significant — the pro-Russian fringe parties that a coordinated TikTok operation had worked to amplify had dramatically underperformed.
The Czech parliamentary election offers a paradox for students of foreign information manipulation. By every technical measure, the operation was sophisticated. Yet the parties it explicitly supported — those calling for Czech withdrawal from NATO and the European Union — fell short of expectations. The far-right SPD received just 7.8 percent, down from pre-election polls suggesting 13 percent. The far-left Stačilo!, built around the Communist Party, failed to clear the 5 percent threshold entirely.¹ The trolls had come, but they had come up short.
The architecture of amplification
In late September 2025, Online Risk Labs, a newly formed group of Czech analysts, published findings that would frame the final weeks of the campaign. They had identified 286 anonymous TikTok accounts operating as a coordinated network — liking, sharing, and commenting on each other’s posts within seconds to game the platform’s recommendation algorithm.² The collective reach was staggering: between 5 and 9 million views per week, exceeding the combined audience of all mainstream party leaders on the platform.
The mechanism was elegant in its simplicity. TikTok’s algorithm prioritizes content based on early engagement signals. When dozens of accounts simultaneously interact with a video in the first moments after posting, the platform interprets this as genuine interest and pushes the content into the “For You” feeds of real users. Some clips gained hundreds of thousands of views within hours, creating the impression of organic public enthusiasm where none existed.³
But the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) went further. In a report delivered to the president and prime minister just days before the vote, intelligence officials identified nearly 1,000 accounts promoting pro-Russian narratives.⁴ The content glorified Vladimir Putin, spread disinformation justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine, and appeared in Czech, Slovak, and Russian — sometimes accompanied by Russian music. The network operated in layers: a handful of “content creators” generating original videos, supported by more than 250 accounts that reposted and amplified them.
What made TikTok particularly vulnerable was its user demographics. More than 2 million Czechs use the platform, with the majority aged 18-24 — first-time voters particularly susceptible to algorithmic manipulation based on early engagement.⁵
The broader information landscape
TikTok was only one front. The Country Election Risk Assessment (CERA), published by a consortium including GLOBSEC, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and Debunk.org, documented a comprehensive ecosystem of foreign information manipulation targeting Czech voters.⁶
Russia remained the central external actor, but China’s role was increasingly visible. Both exploited Telegram networks, disinformation portals, and coordinated social media accounts to spread distrust, voter apathy, and anti-Western narratives. The Pravda network — first identified by France’s VIGINUM in 2014 — had expanded to more than 200 country-specific subdomains, with Czech content appearing regularly. Websites translated directly from Russian state media. Bots impersonated candidates. The lines between fact and fiction blurred systematically.
The narratives were familiar from other European elections: claims that Czechia was being “dragged into war” by supporting Ukraine, that sanctions were destroying the Czech economy, that the EU had become a “dictatorship.” According to GLOBSEC Trends 2025, while 86 percent of Czechs support NATO membership and 72 percent would vote to remain in the EU, the narrative of Brussels overreach resonated with 54 percent of the population.⁷
Why Czechia did not become Romania
Six months after Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled a presidential election over TikTok manipulation, Czech authorities were acutely aware of the precedent. The comparison was inevitable — and the differences instructive.
First, the evidence threshold. Romanian intelligence officials accused Russian actors of creating fake accounts and manipulating algorithms, presenting classified briefings to justify annulment. In Czechia, neither BIS nor the Center for Online Risk Research could definitively link the coordinated accounts to the Russian government. “We don’t know,” researcher Vendula Prokůpková told journalists. “We don’t have the tools to find out.”⁸ Without attribution, there was no basis for challenging the results.
Second, institutional coordination. Czech authorities had prepared extensively. The Ministry of Interior launched public information campaigns. BIS monitored disinformation networks in real time. The Czech Telecommunication Office (CTU) forwarded complaints about suspicious accounts to the European Commission and engaged directly with TikTok, which removed some accounts before election day. The FIMI-ISAC post-election assessment concluded that “strong cooperation among Czech institutions, media, and civil society helped maintain public confidence.”⁹
Third, the outcome itself. The parties explicitly promoted by the coordinated networks underperformed. In Romania, the beneficiary of alleged manipulation — Călin Georgescu — had surged from obscurity to first place. In Czechia, SPD lost votes compared to 2021, and Stačilo! failed to enter parliament at all. The operation appeared to have failed its most direct objectives.
Fourth, democratic mobilization. Turnout reached 69 percent — the highest since 1998. When citizens show up in force, manipulation becomes mathematically harder. High participation signals confidence in the process itself.
The uncomfortable questions
Yet the Czech case raises questions that resist easy answers. ANO won decisively, and Babiš — a co-founder of the Patriots for Europe group alongside Viktor Orbán — now leads a government that has signaled it will review the Czech ammunition initiative for Ukraine. The pro-Western coalition lost power. If the goal of foreign interference is not simply to elect specific candidates but to shift the broader political climate toward skepticism of European integration and Ukraine support, the picture looks different.
Moreover, the post-election FIMI-ISAC assessment noted that while “no coordinated operations capable of influencing the results were detected,” the elections remained “exposed to ongoing vulnerabilities in the Czech information space, including persistent foreign-backed narratives and platform-based amplification.”¹⁰ The infrastructure remains. The narratives persist. The next election will face the same pressures.
There is also the question of what “success” means for such operations. If the explicit promotion of fringe parties serves partly as a distraction — drawing attention and countermeasures while mainstream euroskeptic forces benefit from a generally degraded information environment — then measuring success by SPD’s vote share misses the point.
The Czech election of 2025 demonstrated both the resilience of democratic institutions and the limits of that resilience. The trolls came up short this time. But they will return, better funded and more sophisticated. The question is whether democracies will learn faster than their adversaries adapt.
Sources
¹ Czech Statistical Office, 2025 Parliamentary Election Results, October 4, 2025.
² Online Risk Labs, “Analysis of Coordinated TikTok Networks Ahead of Czech Parliamentary Elections,” September 28, 2025; Reuters, “Anonymous TikTok accounts backing radical parties before Czech vote, study finds,” September 28, 2025.
³ Expats.cz, “‘Hundreds’ of pro-Russia TikTok accounts target Czechia’s upcoming election,” September 29, 2025.
⁴ Public.news, “Intelligence Agency Alleges ‘Pro-Russia’ TikTok Accounts Are Interfering In Czech Elections,” October 2025; Denik N reporting.
⁵ Radio Prague International, “Russian propaganda spreading on Czech TikTok ahead of elections,” September 30, 2025.
⁶ FIMI Response Team (FRT-24), “Czechia: Country Election Risk Assessment (CERA),” GLOBSEC, ISD, Debunk.org, EU DisinfoLab, September 2025. Available at: https://fimi-isac.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/FRT-24_Czechia-Country-Election-Risk-Assessment-CERA_FINAL.pdf
⁷ GLOBSEC Trends 2025: Central and Eastern Europe at the Crossroads.
⁸ Public.news, “Intelligence Agency Alleges ‘Pro-Russia’ TikTok Accounts Are Interfering In Czech Elections,” October 2025.
⁹ FIMI-ISAC, “Assessment of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference in the 2025 Czech Parliamentary Election,” GLOBSEC, ISD, Debunk.org, DEN Institute, Alliance4Europe, November 2025. Available at: https://fimi-isac.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/FRT-24_Globsec_Czech-Election-Report_FINAL.pdf
¹⁰ Ibid.
