Kaliningrad & the Baltics.

[TsarSamuil]

Deal with Russia ‘as it is’ says Estonian president, arguing in favor of greater cooperation with shared neighbor on Baltic visit.

RT.com
5 Mar, 2021 15:14

During a trip to neighboring Latvia, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid has urged European diplomats to pursue more constructive relationships with Moscow, insisting that doing so need not be at the expense of their ‘values’.

In an interview with the local LTV news channel, reported by Russian media on Thursday, the Estonian politician insisted that when it comes to Russia, “being involved doesn’t mean abandoning your principles.”

“I am in favor of dialogue,” she said, “but in it, you need to be firm and give a clear message. This is our common task – to take on these difficult issues.” At the same time, Kaljulaid is quoted as saying, “the more Western neighbors engage with Russia as it is, the more they will understand it.”

“We need to cooperate. For example, we support the fact that the EU, together with Russia, needs to conduct border checks. Likewise, we will willingly host Russian students so that they can see what life is like in the Free World [sic].” However, would-be exchange students might decide to bide their time before booking tickets to Tallinn. Estonia is currently under a strict Covid-19 lockdown, while Russia has already mostly abandoned restrictive measures to control the pandemic as case numbers tumble.

Tensions between Russia and the Baltic nation have risen in recent weeks, with Moscow’s diplomats last month slamming Estonia’s calls for fresh sanctions on the country. The local Russian embassy pointed out that the new government of their host nation had previously said there was an absence of “grounds” for building better relations with their Eastern neighbor.

Earlier this week, the EU, of which Estonia and Latvia are both members, unveiled a package of sanctions aimed at four Russian officials who Brussels claims are responsible for the jailing of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. Also included on the list is the head of the country’s riot police, which Eurocrats accuse of being responsible for “human rights violations” during the policing of protests held in Navalny’s support after his arrest in January.

A diplomatic spat reignited between the two countries in January after Henn Polluaas, the most senior figure in Estonia's legislative assembly, used a New Year’s address to remind the public of a post-WWI agreement that he claims gives the country sovereignty over swathes of Russian territories. According to Polluaas, the “accord is still valid today, according to international law.”

Alexander Drosdenko, the governor of Leningrad Region, where much of the disputed land is now located, hit back at Polluaas’ statement, telling reporters that the parliamentarian's position depended entirely on “selective memory.” Pointing to previous border negotiations as far back as 1996, he claimed that “when signing the protocol, the Estonian side did not have a single question.”

[TsarSamuil]

Exposed: How British state tries to weaponise Russian-speakers in Baltics as ‘agents of change’ in operation to ‘weaken’ Moscow.

RT.com
8 Mar, 2021 08:33

Leaked documents have revealed details of a massive secret British propaganda campaign aimed at making swathes of people in the Baltic states feel more positively about the West – and more negatively about their ethnic homeland.

The UK government has for several years targeted residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, “whose primary language is Russian,” with a variety of information warfare strategies, in order to “develop greater affinity” among them for the UK, European Union and NATO, and to help “weaken the Russian state.”

This is explained in just some of the papers released by hacktivist collective Anonymous, which expose how Whitehall has sought to covertly infiltrate and co-opt civil society at every level across the former Soviet sphere, in order to further London’s financial, geopolitical and ideological interests.

The three Baltic states are home to around one million ethnic Russians – around one sixth of the region’s total residents. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Lithuania quickly moved to grant these individuals citizenship – but conversely, Estonia and Latvia categorized them “non-citizens,” leaving a significant proportion of their respective populations effectively stateless.

Russophone inhabitants in those countries are consequently often unable to hold passports, vote, run for public office, work in a variety of professional fields, and more. They also claim to experience direct and indirect discrimination from authorities and citizens alike. Riga and Tallinn deny these charges, instead accusing Moscow of exploiting the issue for political purposes.

While many Russian-speakers in the region supported their host state’s quest for independence from the USSR, they maintain an empathy for their mother country, which disenfranchisement would undoubtedly amplify.

London began its effort to propagandize this “target audience” at least as early as 2016. A tender document indicates at some point that year, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) reached out to an array of private contractors, asking for assistance in delivering “innovative soft power interventions” to “develop greater affinity with the UK/EU/Baltic States” among Russophones in the region.

The file, rampant with obvious disdain for the identity of the Baltics’ Russian minority, defines “soft power” as “the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading, and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes.”

It also outlines a five-step behavioral change program for targets, although achieving this is forecast to be somewhat problematic, given Russian-speakers 40 years old and above in the Baltics “have a strong affinity with Russia and [are] vulnerable to Russian propaganda,” as “they grew up under the Soviet system and have been shaped by its education and ‘culture.’”

“This makes them supportive of and advocates of (perhaps to the point of acting out) Russian narratives, and be primary consumers of its ‘culture,’” the document contemptuously contends. “They will have low awareness of; knowledge of; interest in; support for; or be advocates of Euro-Atlantic narratives and culture. They also probably lack the skills to critique the culture they consume. They are less likely to speak English so it will be necessary to engage them in their native tongue.”

‘Less vulnerable to Russian propaganda… more vulnerable to Western propaganda’

Conversely, younger Russian speakers are considered more fruitful prey, on the basis “they grew up under national governments and have been shaped by their education.” As a result, they “have medium-high awareness, knowledge and interest of Euro-Atlantic narratives and ‘culture’” which “may make them more open to alternative narratives” and thus “less vulnerable to Russian propaganda.”

It may be instructive at this point to refer to a separate classified document related to Open Information Partnership, another FCDO-funded effort to discredit and destabilize Moscow.

It notes one key barrier to battling Russian “disinformation” is that “certain Kremlin-backed narratives are factually true” – “responding to inconvenient truths, as opposed to pure propaganda, is naturally more problematic.”

One such “inconvenient truth,” of course, could be that Russian-speakers in the Baltics are indeed subject to widespread discrimination, and Russian media reporting on the issue is thus inherently “problematic,” as it’s difficult to factually counter.

For example, a 2019 European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) report highlighted several concerns around Latvia’s treatment of its Russian-speaking population. Among other things, it recorded that in May 2017, an MP from the far-right National Alliance party – which serves in the country’s coalition government – wrote an article for a national newspaper bemoaning how “hard” it was to remove “Russian lice” from one’s “fur.”

The ECRI also noted elected National Alliance representatives are often seen at annual commemorations in Riga celebrating soldiers of the Latvian Legion, a dedicated unit of the Waffen-SS that fought alongside the Nazis against Moscow during World War II.

While the ECRI’s findings were ignored by the Western media, the FCDO is acutely aware of such challenges – in a separate leaked file, Latvian government policy in respect of “non-citizens” is branded “detrimental to social cohesion,” by the department’s Counter Disinformation & Media Development chief Andy Pryce.

Another FCDO document sets out in even more disquieting detail the extent to which Whitehall seeks to understand the perceptions, motivations and habits of its Baltic targets, in order to identify “what can be done by the UK and national Governments to be more attractive” to Russian-speakers, and manipulate them accordingly.

The research brief, scheduled to cost almost a million pounds, called for highly granular psychological analysis of Russophones, surpassing mere gender, income, employment status, occupation, level of education, location, and languages spoken.

London wished to identify their “life motivations and desires,” key interests, likes, hobbies, “current satisfaction of life and attitude towards it,” biggest fears, concerns, challenges, “hopes, dreams, aspirations for the future for themselves and their families,” and “existing or potential grievances against their government.”

In response, Albany Associates – a veteran of Whitehall-funded psyops in Syria, among other countries – submitted proposals to the FCDO, the dimensions of which were vast and troubling in the absolute extreme.

‘Exploit children to influence their parents’

No area of public, or even private, life was considered off limits for infiltration by the company, which is just one of several FCDO-bankrolled contractors attempting to influence and shape the thoughts and actions of inhabitants of the region for political means, without their knowledge or consent.

For instance, Albany pledged to exploit the region’s Russian-speaking youth as “agents of change to influence their parents’ and grandparents’ generations and amplify a distinct ‘Euro-Baltic’ identity.”

One method of doing so was surreptitious sponsorship of “family-centred direct outreach events,” complemented by the staging of “a minimum of 75” cultural activities “in carefully selected Baltic communities,” ostensibly hosted by Estonia’s Vita Tiim, Latvia’s Jasma, and Lithuania’s Youth Initiative Group.

These events – projected to involve “direct engagement of approximately 6,750 people, with a special focus on attracting the 40-60 age group” – were to be held at weekends “to maximize turnout.” This included family movie nights, city-wide competitions, quiz tournaments, “mother and daughter afternoon tea parties” designed to “leverage female influence in society,” and “youth theatre performances.”

One proposed example of the latter activity entailed funding Lithuanian theatrical group Harlequin to produce and tour “a strategically and collaboratively written play” throughout the region. Its plot centred on “contested identities in Russian-speaking families and inter-generational frictions.”

Likewise, films aired at Albany’s screenings would be carefully selected by “local experts” to both “ensure critical mass of interest,” and “spark discussion on Euro-Atlantic values and narratives,” among viewers.

‘Seed online conversations with pro-Western messages’

These events would be greatly amplified by various information campaigns on and offline, in order to “open Russian speakers’ minds” – news outlets “preferred by Russian minorities” blitzed with op-eds on “Russian-speakers benefiting from the EU and other Euro-Atlantic institutions,” online media platforms with “articles, blogs and videos amplifying Baltic life, including art, music, [and] media.”

Albany’s primary local partner in these efforts was to be marketing firm Inspired, said to already manage a Latvian/Russian news portal with a user base of around 400,000, and have previously led a “successful campaign on European currency transition.”

The pair sought to identify and cultivate a network of the region’s “most powerful” online influencers in order to secretly “seed online conversations” with Whitehall-approved key messaging, creating a Facebook page to “disseminate information on Baltic Euro-leaning heritage,” and promote the various cultural events covertly convened by Albany.

Users were to be oblivious that their engagement with the platform would be keenly scrutinized by the FCDO contractor, in order to optimize its propaganda output.

“Participatory conversation will be encouraged on the platform, then analysed throughout to gauge sentiment, refine influencer maps and establish key themes,” Albany wrote. “The campaign will be launched and carefully seeded in Russian on appropriate social media channels according to a tailored strategy. It will also use key dates and events of significance to Russian speakers, such as WWII celebrations as a way of inserting itself into pre-existing conversations to amplify the campaign effects.”

Prior to the leak of these files, suggestions the UK government was secretly funding quiz nights, theatre productions, maternal tea parties, social media influencers and more in the Baltic countries to undermine Russia, and in the process using unwitting youths as “agents” to manipulate their forebears, could easily be dismissed as the deranged ramblings of a conspiracy theorist.

However, the documents lay bare in black and white that London has indeed been waging an insidious conspiracy in the region, as wide-ranging as it is sinister, and will stop at nothing to demonize, destabilize and isolate Moscow nationally and internationally.

[TsarSamuil]

Nazi war criminal celebrated by Lithuanian government as hero of WW2 resistance exposed by his own granddaughter in brand new book.

RT.com
9 Mar, 2021 16:09

American journalist Silvia Foti exposed a major cover-up by the Lithuanian government. Her grandfather, considered a WWII hero in the country, was actually a Nazi mass murderer. Now she’s written a book that tells the real story.

It seems clear that Foti’s grandmother, who begged her not to write about her husband, knew the truth. “Just let history lie,” she whispered to her granddaughter. This week, with the book’s publication, the truth will finally be told: known as an Anti-Soviet partisan, Jonas Noreika, celebrated with monuments in his homeland, was a war criminal who had been personally responsible for having ordered the murder of thousands of Jews in Lithuania during the Holocaust.

One such place was in the western town of Plungė, where Noreika served in the beginning of WWII as commander of the Lithuanian Activist Front, an openly anti-Semitic group that cheered the coming of the Nazis as liberators. Plungė’s entire Jewish population of more than 1,800 was murdered, mostly by local people, within days of their arrival in July 1941.

“While my grandfather’s role in the Holocaust has been painful enough to discover,” says Foti, an American journalist, in an op-ed for the Times of Israel, “what has been equally painful was the discovery of the Lithuanian government’s denial of his role in the Holocaust. This is the 10th stage of genocide – denial that it ever happened.”

In the center of the capital, Vilnius, there is a plaque to Noreika on the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and his name is on a wall commemorating national heroes at the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights. His home village boasts a monument and school named after him, and there is a plaque honoring him in a street in the second-largest city, Kaunas. Thirteen years after he was exposed as one of Lithuania’s most prolific Holocaust perpetrators, the government posthumously bestowed on him the president’s highest award: the Order of the Cross of Vytis.

After 20 years of research, Foti’s book, ‘The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal’ was finally published today. Its cover features a quote from a New York Times review: “Blaming Russian propaganda has suddenly become a lot more difficult, thanks to Mr Noreika’s own granddaughter, Silvia Foti.”

Lithuanians have always been quick to accuse Moscow of being behind anything that casts their country in a bad light, but the facts speak for themselves: according to major international research institutions that have studied the Holocaust, especially the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Lithuanian complicity was both widespread and a major reason why 96.4 percent of the country’s pre-1939 Jewish population – which numbered 250,000 – was wiped out. Fewer than a thousand Nazis could not have murdered so many people. They needed, and received, the help of Lithuanians to carry out the horrifying task, which they executed with both enthusiasm and intense cruelty.

Foti’s investigation exposed an official cover-up by the government of the role her grandfather played in the Holocaust. While many Lithuanians see her as a traitor for bringing shame on their country, and have voiced a desire to see her declared a persona non grata, she robustly defends her actions in the NYT op-ed: “Analysis of a dark past is always traumatic. But we will never achieve clarity and healing if we base our history on lies.” Foti declined to be interviewed by RT for this article.

Last month, the head of the Institute of History and three universities declared they could no longer cooperate with the state-funded Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (LGGRTC). Its research, they argued, had become ideologized and politicized, encouraging a “defense of history” and perpetuating “wars of memory.” Its employees, they claimed, were also making irresponsible statements and giving biased information in interviews. These are the very accusations the Lithuanian government makes against Russia.

A case in point: the LGGRTC says the activities of Juozas Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius, a former minister of education and the acting prime minister under the provisional government in 1941, during Lithuania’s occupation by Nazi Germany, “were investigated fully by the US Congress and US Immigration and Naturalization Service” and that, in 1974, he “was completely exonerated” of charges that he was a Nazi puppet and Holocaust collaborator.

What the center hides, and continues to deny until today, is that the US investigation was dropped, because Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius died in 1974. No decision regarding either criminally charging or exonerating him was ever adopted. This is confirmed in a 2019 letter from US Congressman Bradley Sherman to the then-prime minister of Lithuania, Saulius Skvernelis. Sherman, whose parents were of Russian-Jewish descent, references documents – inaccessible in 1974 because they were in the Soviet jurisdiction – that testify to Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius’ complicity in the Holocaust.

Seven years earlier, Sherman and two other US congressmen protested at Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius being reburied with full honors. They said it “undermines efforts to counter anti-Semitism and to recognize the crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators. We hope you will take concrete steps to demonstrate your government’s commitment to accurate historical portrayal and recognize the darkest realities of the Holocaust.”

Attempts by RT to make contact with Congressman Sherman were unsuccessful, and correspondence with Grant Gochin, a Lithuanian Jewish American and a serial litigant against the Republic of Lithuania, who made publicly available a list of legal claims against Lithuanian governmental Holocaust revisionism, also went unanswered.

To date, the LGGRTC has merely reinforced, rather than corrected, its misinformation about Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius. It has also tried to discredit Sherman, claiming his opinion should be viewed in the context of his role as a politician and not as a new source of historical information.

The previous director of the LGGRTC, Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė, was neither a historian nor a lawyer, yet claimed to have a greater understanding of the meaning of US Congressional documents than Lithuania’s Congressional allies, and Dalius Stancikas, the current head of public relations for the LGGRTC, continues those falsifications, yet these have the rule of law in Lithuania.

The irony is that Sherman was one of the staunchest promoters of greater co-operation between Vilnius and Washington. He and US Congressmen Henry Waxman and Howard Berman voted for the country’s membership to NATO in 2004 and supported the deployment of the US military in Lithuania, all of which have been of no small benefit to the Baltic state. Trade between the countries amounts to more than $1.9 billion annually and, in 2019, Washington provided Vilnius with approximately $88 million in security assistance.

So, when Valdas Rakutis, a Lithuanian MP from the ruling coalition who was then also chairman of the parliament’s Historical Memory Commission, declared on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January this year that Jews are also to be blamed for the Holocaust, it is a reflection of the country’s official policy. It is also an indication that the government values maintaining its fraudulent history over offending its strongest ally.

When the prosecutor at the Vilnius District Office subsequently declined to investigate Rakutis’ statements, arguing that Rakutis had no intention of inciting negative public reaction against people of Jewish ethnicity, and had not sought to incite hatred and discord, Vilnius sent a strong message that it would rather risk its national existence than discontinue with its falsifications. In continuing to protect Nazi supporters and enablers, certain questions have to be asked. What kind of value system does Lithuania have, and why would Europe want to be associated with it? And why, when the country has been internationally exposed for having perpetuated propaganda, would Europe afford it credibility on any subject?

Rakutis’ subsequent resignation from the Historical Memory Commission was – according to Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of its Israel office – only because he’d made his statements “on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in parliament, and there was an international uproar about it.” His views, says Zuroff, “contained all the elements that are official policy in Lithuania.”

The US-based advocacy organization the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN) has launched an initiative to ensure all 535 members of the US Congress learn about the ongoing Holocaust revisionism campaign perpetrated by Lithuania. “The Lithuanian government not only hides the criminal histories of Holocaust perpetrators, but adds insult to injury by bestowing their highest national honors on those who are proven murderers of Jews. If the Lithuanian government is able to effortlessly lie about history’s greatest crime, then it begs the question: what won’t it lie about?” says Dillon Hosier, ICAN’s CEO.

Foti writes: “My grandfather will remain to me a monster. Those watching are the families of his victims. I know that forgiving is impossible. Only the murdered may forgive and they are not here to do that. So, I ask you to accept my genuine personal apology. I am sorry for the sins of my grandfather and I am sorry for what the Lithuanian government continues to do.”

[TsarSamuil]

Latvia begins blocking RT news site aimed at country’s Russian-speaking minority as outlet accuses Riga of attack on free press.

RT.com
31 Mar, 2021 11:42

A ban on RT’s Russian-language news service is coming into full force in Latvia after officials began implementing a controversial decision by the country’s online media watchdog, which has already seen RT channels taken off air.

RT confirmed on Wednesday morning that authorities had started to implement restrictions on access to its Russian website, in line with a decision by the Latvian National Electronic Media Council. The ruling, issued in June last year, has already seen seven separate RT channels officially banned from the airwaves in the Baltic country. Free press watchdog Reporters Without Borders railed against the decision at the time, saying it was made on a “flimsy legal basis.”

“Latvia has begun to shut down access to the RT website in Russian. The site is now inaccessible to users of several major providers in the country,” the network said in a statement.

Officials in Riga have claimed that the Russian state-funded outlet is “effectively controlled” by Dmitry Kiselyov, a Moscow-born journalist who is on a list of individuals officially sanctioned by the EU. However, nobody in Riga has ever produced any evidence to demonstrate Kiselyov has ever held any role at RT, its parent company or any of its projects, channels or platforms. In a statement issued at the time, Kiselyov mocked the decision, saying that he had no involvement with the news group and arguing that the move should be reversed.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Anna Belkina, Deputy Editor in Chief of RT, contended that the decision “flows from a series of troublingly absurd assertions made by Latvian intelligence, in which they falsely link a sanctioned individual to RT.”

The claims, she said, have become “a rabbit hole which has led its government to blindly take this illegitimate action. Not only has Latvia already been castigated by Reporters Without Borders for misusing EU policy, and threatened its own people with draconian fines for watching the media they want to consume, but now it is sending a message to the world that its free market and free press is officially dead.”

“Sadly,” Belkina added, “this is just the latest step in what’s become a quotidian campaign against RT and other alternative voices around the world.” However, she said, “rarely are such actions so thinly veiled as those in Latvia."

A number of visitors to RT’s online content on Wednesday were redirected to a message warning them that their “internet browser is trying to connect to a website which, in the territory of the Latvian Republic, is unlawfully distributing television programs without a re-transmission permit.”

Valentin Rozhnetsov, Editor in Chief of the Russian state-funded Sputnik Latvia news service said that the country “is trying with all its might to play the role of a state governed by the rule of law… this time though, something seems to have broken down.” He added that the move was based on “thin compliance with the law” and claimed that, instead of being based on agreed policy, it was being made on a technicality, driven by “political” motives.

The previous ruling affected channels including RT, RT HD, RT Arabic, RT Spanish, RT Documentary HD, RT Documentary and RT TV.

In February, local media announced that the Seimas, Latvia’s parliament, had adopted a bill in its final reading that will criminalize people for watching unauthorized broadcasts picked up from across the country’s eastern border. Ivars Abolins, chairman of Latvia’s National Council for Electronic Media, issued a statement backing the ban. “We have protected, are protecting, and will protect our information space,” he said. The regulators claim that talk-show guests on the Russian-speaking channels have incited hatred and called for war in Europe.

At the time, the Russian Embassy in Riga issued a stern protest in response. In a statement, diplomats claimed that the policy was “in the best traditions of dictatorship.”

More than one in three Latvians reports speaking Russian in the home as a native language, but dozens of broadcasters showing programming aimed at the minority group have seen their licenses revoked and have been pulled off the air. In 2018, the country’s main opposition party, Harmony, which is led by Russian speakers and has close links to parties across the border, won nearly a quarter of the available seats in the Seimas in a parliamentary election.

[TsarSamuil]

Latvia's Human Rights and Public Affairs Commission approves ban of St. George's Ribbon, a hallmark of WWII victory celebrations.

RT.com
23 Sep, 2021 12:18

A commission of Latvia's parliament has approved a bill that would ban the use of the iconic St. George's ribbon during public events, with MPs believing it is a symbol of the Soviet era and is against the spirit of independence.

The measure, waved through by parliament's Human Rights and Public Affairs Commission this week, must be signed off by MPs before it passes into law.

The St. George's Ribbon is a black-and-orange-striped military symbol, which first appeared in 1769 as the ribbon of the Order of St. George, the highest military decoration of Imperial Russia. It regained prominence almost 200 years later, during World War II, when the same ribbon was used for the Soviet Order of Glory. Nowadays, the two colors are synonymous with the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, and the ribbon is seen extensively during annual celebrations.

According to the head of the commission, Artuss Kaimiņš, the values carried by the symbol are "unacceptable," also claiming that Russia's "totalitarian ideology towards the former Soviet republics" is a reason to reject the ribbon. Latvia has reason to see Moscow as a "threat to its democratic system and security," he said, according to Latvian publication Jauns.

Kaimiņš is a former actor and radio host who created his own right-wing political party in 2016. He was elected as an MP in 2018. Two years later, he was kicked out of the faction for alleged disloyalty to the party line.

In recent times, the black-and-orange ribbon has caused some controversy abroad, particularly in Ukraine and the Baltic states, where some believe it to be associated with Russian irredentism. It was banned in 2017 in Ukraine, with Kiev believing it to have become a symbol of the war in the country's east, which it blames on Moscow. Similar bans have also been discussed in Lithuania. Belarus has also moved away from the symbol, instead changing to a red and green ribbon.