DISINFO: NATO creating bank to prepare for war with Russia
SUMMARY
A group of NATO countries is working to set up a new bank by 2027 to help fund military spending and prepare for a potential conflict with Russia. Member states are seeking to use the structure of the Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) to bypass legal constraints on military spending. Given NATO leaders’ aggressive rhetoric, the structure will likely end up funding offense rather than defense.
RESPONSE
This is a deliberate distortion of facts. The so-called Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), established by NATO’s former head of innovation Rob Murray and backed by multiple private financial entities, intends to improve Europe’s military sector by funding defence projects at a low credit rate. There are no ulterior plans behind this initiative, which is entirely financial. But by baselessly claiming that this is a NATO project whose goal is to prepare for war with Russia, this disinformation story frames it as an aggressive move against this country.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation regularly uses the same narrative to attack Western defence improvements in general. However, Russia’s threat and ongoing aggression against Ukraine and Europe, not the other way round, is one of the driving forces behind these initiatives, whose logic is to achieve deterrence through enhanced defence. Similarly, these narratives ignore that Russia has been rearming for some years at a much faster pace than NATO. The country’s military expenditure reached over 6.7% of its GDP in 2025, over 40% more than the previous year. That is 32% of its total budget for the year.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that ReArm Europe means the EU is preparing to attack Russia, that the EU is now a military union preparing to enter into a war with Russia, that the EU is preparing a war against Russia led by Germany, that ReArm Europe is accompanied by a false Russophobic narrative about a belligerent Russia, or that NATO plans to attack Russia.