Jack Baud and the New Meaning of ‘Propaganda’: Sanctions, Speech and Power in Peacetime Europe

Public law, sanctions, free expression

This is not a plea for sympathy. It is a test of constitutional plumbing. When a state can impose severe restrictions on property and movement, without a prior judicial finding, because ministers classify a person’s speech as “propaganda”, the question is not who deserves it. The question is what limits it.

Two cases place that question in sharp relief. One is new and European. One has already been tested in the English courts. Read together, they reveal a quiet drift: executive classification of speech is doing work that definition and trial would normally do.

Case study one: Jacques Baud and the EU “destabilising activities” regime

On 15 December 2025, the Council of the European Union adopted further listings under its framework of restrictive measures “in view of Russia’s destabilising activities”, including foreign information manipulation and interference. Those listed are subject to an asset freeze, a prohibition on EU citizens and companies making funds or economic resources available to them, and (for natural persons) a travel ban on entry into or transit through EU territory. The Council’s press release describes the package as a response to Russia’s hybrid activities, including information manipulation and malicious cyber activity.¹

Among the individuals listed is Jacques Baud, a Swiss national and former Swiss Army colonel. The Council’s published “statement of reasons” alleges that he “acts as a mouthpiece for pro Russian propaganda” and “makes conspiracy theories”, giving as an example an allegation that Ukraine orchestrated its own invasion to join NATO. It then states that he is responsible for implementing or supporting actions or policies attributable to the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability or security in Ukraine by engaging in the use of information manipulation and interference.²

Baud’s own public account, given in an interview during the Christmas period, is that he lives in Belgium and that the listing has had acute day to day effects on his ability to transact. He says he is cut off from payment systems in the EU and that third parties cannot provide him with resources without running into blocks. As lawyers, we treat those claims as allegations unless supported by documentary evidence. But even without the most dramatic version of events, the constitutional point remains: the state has reached for a foreign policy instrument and attached it to speech based allegations, with immediate coercive consequences.

Case study two: Graham Phillips and the UK test of free expression

In the UK, the analogous constitutional conflict has already reached judgment. Graham Phillips was sanctioned by the UK in July 2022 under the Russia sanctions regime for producing and publishing content from the Donbas which the Government characterised as propaganda in favour of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.⁶

Phillips challenged his designation by judicial review. The Administrative Court’s judgment begins with striking candour: “This claim raises questions about the boundaries of the right to free speech, and the permissibility of interference with that right under legislation that allows the state to freeze the assets of those who support policies or actions that destabilise Ukraine.”⁴

The court dismissed the claim. The exact legal route and reasoning matter less here than the institutional lesson: when sanctions are justified as foreign policy measures linked to national security and international relations, courts frequently apply careful review but also substantial deference to executive assessment. Phillips therefore stands as a warning to anyone who assumes “free speech” wins by invocation alone. In sanctions litigation, the decisive question is typically whether the executive had a lawful basis, gave adequate reasons, and acted proportionately within a regime designed to be preventive.

We are not at war: why that is the pressure point

The phrase “we are not at war” is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a constitutional checkpoint. War historically widens the state’s claimed necessity, narrows procedural protections, and normalises emergency logic. In these cases, no such formal threshold has been crossed. The UK and EU describe Russia as a hostile actor and a source of destabilising activity, but they are not in a declared state of war with Russia.

That matters because peacetime rights architecture rests on a basic discipline: if the state wants to impose drastic restrictions on property, movement, and expression, it is supposed to do so through known legal categories, evidential standards, and procedures that permit timely challenge. Sanctions regimes were built to be quick, preventive, and politically responsive. When they are turned on speech, they carry those characteristics into an area where law traditionally demands slow rigor.

The hinge issue: opinion or propaganda

Baud’s core claim is conceptually simple and legally significant: he expressed analytical opinion, based on professional experience, about an ongoing conflict. Opinion is not criminalised. There is no war. There is no general legal prohibition on diverging from official policy. The question, then, is what has changed.

The state answer is equally simple. It says it is not punishing opinion. It is restricting conduct that supports hostile policy objectives through information manipulation. That single move does most of the work. It converts speech into conduct by classification.

Once that move is made, the real dispute is no longer philosophical. It is forensic. What evidence shows that a person’s speech is operational support rather than protected analysis? What objective criteria distinguish lawful dissent from sanctionable assistance? And what procedure ensures that distinction is applied fairly, quickly, and proportionately?

The alignment problem: how “propaganda” is now doing legal work without a definition

The uncomfortable truth is that “propaganda” is rarely doing its work through a stable content based definition such as falsity, incitement, or specific criminality. Instead, it often operates through alignment and attribution. If ministers assess that a person’s output functions as support for an adversary’s destabilising objectives, the label attaches, and sanctions follow.

That is not a claim that governments never care about truth. It is a claim about institutional mechanism. In these regimes, the decisive trigger is frequently an executive conclusion that the speech supports hostile state policy goals. This is why the “pro American propaganda” thought experiment bites: on paper, any foreign state could engage in influence operations; in practice, “propaganda” is overwhelmingly applied to adversaries because the category is activated by threat designation and foreign policy alignment, not neutral content rules.

For a liberal order, this is a moment of self recognition. If propaganda is a label that follows geopolitical alignment, then it becomes a tool of discipline rather than a term of analysis. The state may insist it is only defending democracy. The legal system must ask whether the defence is constrained by law, or simply enabled by it.

Why the private sector becomes the censor

Sanctions are powerful because they do not need to criminalise speech to neutralise a speaker. They operate through banks, platforms, employers, and counterparties. The state sets liability risk. The private sector responds with risk avoidance. The result can be practical exclusion far beyond the four corners of the legal text.

This is not moral panic. It is compliance reality. “Do not make funds or economic resources available” is interpreted defensively. Banks block. Payment processors refuse. Platforms de risk. Friends become cautious. The system does not need a prosecutor. It needs a compliance department.

In that sense, sanctions can achieve a peacetime equivalent of speech suppression without ever passing a statute that bans a viewpoint. The state will say, and often sincerely, that it is not censoring. Yet the effect is that certain opinions become economically toxic once classified as hostile information activity.

What a court would actually do with this

If these disputes are litigated, the court will not decide the Ukraine war. It will decide legality and proportionality. The questions will be recognisable to any public lawyer.

First, is there a lawful basis within the sanctions regime for listing on the grounds given, and are the reasons adequate? In the EU context, the Official Journal entry and the supporting framework matter.²³

Second, is there sufficient evidential basis for the characterisation used? The court will not demand criminal proof, but it will expect rational connection between material and conclusion. In politically sensitive domains, however, courts often show restraint in second guessing foreign policy judgments.

Third, proportionality: are the measures necessary, and are less intrusive options realistically available? Phillips shows that even where expression is engaged, a court can still uphold designation if it accepts the state’s framing and concludes the interference is justified within the scheme.⁴⁵

Fourth, procedural fairness: what opportunity exists to make representations, and how quickly can urgent issues be addressed, particularly where basic needs are said to be affected?

Conclusion: the constitutional question that will not go away

Baud and Phillips matter because they expose a peacetime drift: foreign policy powers being used to impose domestic financial exclusion on individuals for speech classified as supportive of an adversary. The legal issue is not whether their views are correct or distasteful. It is whether “propaganda” is functioning as a trigger without stable definition, objective criteria, and front end safeguards.

Courts will often defer to executive foreign policy judgments. Phillips demonstrates that reality in the UK context.⁴⁵ That makes the limiting principle more, not less, important. In a democracy not formally at war, the state must be able to explain, in evidence and in process, why a person’s speech crosses the line from protected opinion into sanctionable support, and why less intrusive measures would not suffice.

Without that discipline, the category expands. Russia today. Someone else tomorrow. The target is not a crime, but a viewpoint classified as hostile. And once the economy becomes the enforcement arm of speech classification, the question is no longer whether the state can shut people up. It is whether the legal order has built a mechanism that does so while insisting it does not.