Russian government funded eastern European news sites: report

[TygrBright]

Source: The Hill

BuzzFeed News obtained Skype chat logs, which were first discovered by Estonian journalists and investigators probing a suspected Russian operative in Estonia, that detail an effort by the Kremlin to conduct information warfare across Europe.

According to the logs, Estonian and other versions of the "BaltNews" sites are actually fronts for the Kremlin, which dictates the sites' content and often urges stories critical of the U.S. or American society to be published.

A leading Estonian strategic communications expert, Raul Rebane, told the news site that the effort amounted to “systemic information-related activities on foreign territory. In other words — information warfare.”

“The pressure to turn [Estonia] from facing the West to facing the East has grown," he added of Russia's likely goals.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/technology/404137-russian-government-funded-eastern-european-news-sites-report

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I linked to The Hill article because it's pithier and less sensationalized than the BuzzFeed story, but that's also worth a read for additional detail, here: This Is How Russian Propaganda Actually Works In The 21st Century.

An excerpt from the BuzzFeed story:

Long before Russian interference in the 2016 US election became one of the biggest stories in the world, and Kremlin disinformation campaigns became a household issue, Moscow faced accusations of trying to influence public opinion in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which are all members of NATO.

The revelations about the websites in the Baltic states provide a rare and detailed inside look into how such disinformation campaigns work, and the lengths to which Moscow is willing to go to obscure its involvement in such schemes.

In the Baltics, Russia directly borders the European Union, and NATO has a big military presence, but perhaps most importantly the region is home to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians, mostly in Estonia and Latvia.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, he did so under the pretext of protecting the interests of “Russian speakers.” So in the Baltic states, Russian propaganda is a real and present fear, and explains why attempts by Moscow to influence public opinion are treated so seriously.

Does anyone-- ANYONE-- think that Putin hasn't put even greater effort, with even greater resources and more strategies, into suborning the American narrative about who we are and what we represent in the world? Can anyone make a case for him doing LESS information warfare against the nation that the Kremlin and the KGB, his own 'hood, so to speak, has always regarded as "the main enemy"?

We are under siege. We have been under siege for a long time. Not noticing only makes it easier for him.

wearily,
Bright

[cstanleytech]

1. More and more it sounds like someone needs to do something permanent about Putin

before he triggers a war.

[Botany]

2. I have always thought there is a Fox News/Russian connection too

n/t

[ancianita]

3. Putin beta tested internat'l hacks on Estonia in 2007, then us. Estonia is now hack-proof.

The New Yorker carried the best article, last year, on how they do it.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic

In 2007, a Russian cyberattack on Estonia sent everything from the banks to the media into chaos. Estonians today see it as the defining event of their recent history.

The chief outgrowth of the attack is the nato Coöperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence ...

It publishes the “Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations” and organizes a yearly research conference ... it is best known for its training simulations: an eight-hundred-person cyber “live-fire” exercise called Locked Shields was run this year alongside cybrid, an exercise for defense ministers of the E.U. “This included aspects such as fake news and social media,” Maigre said.

We need to learn from Estonia. Fast.