Mirko Campochiari is one of Italy’s most followed and trustworthy military bloggers. Known online as ‘Parabellum‘, he has built a solid reputation thanks to his constant work of technical-military analysis on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, debunking hoaxes and reporting, in real time, on the evolution of the frontline.

This is not propaganda, but open source research: every piece of data, every source, every map is verifiable. And it is precisely one of these maps, published through the think tank Parabellum Think Tank, that has become the subject of a grotesque and disturbing request by a Russian court, the Voronezh Tribunal, on the input of the censorship body Roskomnadzor.

The message sent to Campochiari, a private Italian citizen, is very clear in its implicit threat: remove the information ‘forbidden in the Russian Federation’, interrupt traffic from Russia to the map and notify the official email of the Russian authorities of the censorship.
As if the Kremlin could exercise coercive power over a European digital space, treating independent information as a commodity for ideological smuggling.

And that is not enough. The pressure also extends to Italian providers: e-mails, direct contacts, ‘suggested’ requests to stop hosting, with the subtext that ignoring Moscow could have consequences.
A behaviour more reminiscent of mafia logic than diplomatic.
An Italian citizen threatened by a foreign court for content published in Italy. A very serious precedent.

Action Senator Marco Lombardo, responding publicly on X to Campochiari, promised a parliamentary question ‘to ask whether it is normal for the Italian government to threaten an Italian citizen and blackmail an Italian company to force it to prevent the dissemination, not in Russia, but in Italy, of unwelcome information.’

Here’s the point: this is not just a personal matter. This episode is a test for Europe’s information sovereignty. Roskomnadzor, which controls Russian censorship, has stretched its tentacles beyond the borders of the Runet in recent years, applying the so-called ‘Landing Law’ that obliges foreign platforms to register and comply with Russian laws.
The objective is clear: to import censorship beyond the Federation’s borders, preventing analyses, maps, and articles from reaching the Russian public through external sources.

But the Campochiari case marks a quantum leap. Here, a European citizen is expected to censor himself, under threat, and his digital service providers to act as executors of a foreign order. It is no longer just control of the domestic narrative: it is projection of censorial power, a form of hybrid warfare against European freedom of information.

The implications are manifold.
First: can a Russian censorship court order an Italian provider to block access to legal content in Europe?
Second: is it permissible for an authoritarian state to intimidate foreign citizens for geopolitical content hosted on non-Russian servers?
Third: this episode marks another step forward in Russia’s hybrid war. Censorship is now carried out through a direct threat to an Italian and European citizen operating in his own country, in full freedom to deny Russian propaganda.

The answer today is dramatically uncertain. Italy must defend its citizens. But Europe must understand that the information war is already within its borders. And that silence, ambiguity and renunciation to protect free analysis are, in fact, a form of passive complicity with Russian censorship.

Those who work every day to tell what is happening on the frontline – with data, maps, satellites, studies – risk more than they think. Parabellum’s map evidently does not suit the Kremlin. It shows that the war is not going as they tell it. That propaganda is belied by data. And for that reason it must be obscured. Like free voices. Like the truth.

The Parabellum case is a European issue. It concerns the resilience of our freedom, our rights, our digital space. It is not enough to ignore it. We must react. And armour the right to inform, to analyse, to tell.

Because the war against information has already begun. And Russia, struggling in the field, is playing its last, dangerous, cards.