By Margarita Assenova, for Polygraph Vladimir Kornilov Russian political commentator “Poland, the Baltic States and, for some time now, Ukraine, without even realizing that they are acting to their own detriment, are trying to do everything they can to, as they see it, harm Russia. That is why they are impeding the expansion of Russian gas projects and acting solely for the sake of the United States, contrary to their…
By Polygraph Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account “In the early 90s the Baltic nations, after over 50 years of being a part of the #SovietUnion, gained their national independence. This event raised hopes and aspirations that the Baltic Soviet Republics would turn into modern democratic and rule-of-law states, which, unfortunately, never came true.” Source: Russian Foreign Ministry Twitter account, August 27, 2019 False By all metrics, the Baltic…
By Holger Roonemaa (POSTIMEES), Inga Springe (RE:BALTICA) Skype logs and other documents obtained by Re:Baltica, Postimees and Buzzfeed offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. The Russian government via companies in Serbia and Cyprus discreetly funded a group of seemingly independent news websites in Eastern Europe to pump out stories dictated to them by the Kremlin, BuzzFeed News and its reporting partners can reveal. Russian state media created secret companies in…
By Viktor Denisenko, in cooperation with Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis, for StopFake On February 23, 2018, the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania blocked the transmission of RTR Planeta – a Russian-state television channel – for 12 months. RTR Planeta was already temporarily banned in Lithuania twice before for one- and three- month periods respectively. Similarly, other Russian-state channels have also faced similar fate before. Even today, 27 years…
By EU vs Disinfo A dark image of the Baltic states was (again), painted in pro-Kremlin disinformation this week. Firstly, the Latvian Army was accused of shooting civilians in 1991, during Latvia’s transition to independence from the Soviet Union. In a new Russian documentary covering the topic of ”pseudo-revolutions”, it is claimed that Latvian Army Officers shot civilians, ”much as the case was also on Maidan 2014” according to the movie. Of…
The Baltic presidents’ visit to the US has received special attention from the Kremlin-supported media in order to show that nothing serious has happened. Propaganda outlets tried to convey a message that not only Donald Trump has not promised anything to “the Pribalts”, but also that he has humiliated them. Some local Lithuanian periodicals put effort not to stay behind Kremlin’s disinformation channels. Their goal was not only to show…
By Laurynas Keturakis, for Integrity Initiative Since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in 2014, the Baltic States have kept an especially watchful eye on the Kremlin. Recently, aside from voicing concerns about the joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2017 exercise and Iskander deployments in Kaliningrad, Baltic countries have taken steps to consolidate their defenses and prepare their institutions for a similar hybrid Crimea scenario. Both Latvia and Estonia have organized several cyber defense…
By Lukas Andriukaitis, for Integrity Initiative The 2016 US Presidential elections were the final wake-up call for Western countries to grasp the full scope of Russian information warfare. For more than a decade, Russia has been waging (link sends email) an unceasing and far-reaching information campaign against NATO and the Western countries, which were caught by surprise. Meanwhile, the Baltic States have been fighting on the information front (link sends email) since gaining independence in 1990.…
By Polygraph Sputnik News and Zvezda “In Latvia, Hitler has become more popular than Harry Potter.” Source: TV Zvezda, Sputnik News FALSE Latvian booksellers are unloading old copies of Mein Kampf, not snapping them up. On April 2, Zvezda TV and Sputnik published the false claim that Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is more popular in Latvia than Harry Potter, the fictional school child who is the main character of a popular series of…
By Urve Eslas, for CEPA Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a 17 February speech at the Munich Security Conference, described as “Russophobic” neighboring countries that oppose Russia’s core interests. The media’s use of this term has increased remarkably since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. The Kremlin’s weaponization of the word has also been applied in recent years to Estonia. Unfortunately Estonia itself seems to have adopted this label as well. On 8…
