European Leadership Network (ELN) flags social-media circulation of fake Ukraine-related article falsely attributed to its platform
by Piyush Mathur
The London-based European Leadership Network (ELN) took to social media earlier in September alerting people to the social-media circulation of ‘a fabricated article’ that ‘falsely bears the ELN logo.’ This flagged fake piece of research, the ELN notes in a LinkedIn post, predicts ‘famine and the collapse of Ukraine’s economy.’
While the post does not mention the original source of the fake article’s publication or circulation, it references Facebook and TikTok as the relevant platforms. The post includes a screenshot of the fabricated article, which the ELN has digitally stamped with the word ‘FABRICATED’ in red capital letters.
It is unclear from the post, however, whether only the article’s front page has been circulating as a screenshot, or whether the entire article has been circulating and the ELN chose to capture its front page for its alerting post.
The fake article—as it appears in the ELN’s post containing its first page’s screenshot—is not merely falsely branded with the ELN logo, but has been constructed to resemble an ELN-hosted article by a real ELN member, using her genuine name, photograph and genuine affiliation with the Berlin-based European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). The screenshot shows Agathe Demarais as the fake article’s author.
Demarais is a (French) member of the Younger Generation Leaders Network on Euro-Atlantic Security (YGLN), a core network of the ELN. A Senior Policy Fellow at the ECFR, Demarais is also author of Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests (Columbia University Press, 2024).
This is a screenshot of a LinkedIn post made by the European Leadership Network (ELN) in mid-September 2026; it shows the stamp 'FABRICATED' in red on its own screenshot of the first page of a fake article attributed to its platform and its affiliated researcher. (Screenshot credit: Thoughtfox)
These facts matter because they render this incident into something more specific than an ordinary fabricated research claim about Ukraine's economy: This is rather a case of an apparent institutional/academic impersonation, with geopolitical motives underpinning it.
While the ELN’s post establishes the impersonation much more securely than it establishes the perpetrator or motive, one can place it within the context of prior investigative reports—such as by the US-registered The Record (2024) and the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2025)—claiming that Russia-supported outfits have been indulging in false impersonations of ‘Western’ researchers and associated fraudulent activities intended to spread misleading information about Ukraine. These activities have included pushing fabricated research publications, ostensibly authored by ‘Western’ experts.
And yet, there remains an open, perhaps additional, curiosity whether Demarais—who has previously written specifically about Ukraine’s economy—might have herself been a specific target of this false impersonation—and if so, why? For there is always a possibility that random actors may exploit the Russian backdrop to falsely impersonate individual researchers or even institutions, for reasons known only to them and, perhaps, their victims..
The ELN LinkedIn post does not (so far) include any locational details of the Facebook and TikTok posts that it claims had carried the image.
The ELN post can be accessed via this Unique Resource Locator (URL): https://lnkd.in/p/gTxg8i-p
Thoughtfox has reached out to Ms. Demarais for any comments on the incident discussed in this report, which would be updated if a response is received.
Incorporated in England and Wales on February 8, 2011, the ELN introduces itself on its website as ‘an independent, non-partisan, pan-European network of over 450 past, present and future European leaders working to provide practical real-world solutions to political and security challenges.’ The ELN’s legal status is that of a ‘Private Limited Company by guarantee without share capital use of “Limited” exemption.’