Propaganda in August

This August brought more propaganda type accusations towards Estonia than ever before, starting with the traditional Nazism and media censorship right up to the persecution of Russian-speaking inhabitants of Estonia.

Writers of propaganda were left without accreditations

 The news at the end of August reported that Russian propaganda website workers did not receive accreditation for the European Union’s Foreign Minister’s non-official meeting in Tallinn at the beginning of September. The press representative of the European Presidency told BNS, that the Estonian authorities reserve the right not to accredit or consider media reporting channels – Rossia Segodnja

Channels of certain concerns -, whose editors are not independent and do not use good reporting methods. The same principle applies to presidential events in Estonia.

Karmo Tüür: The west is awaking and cracking down on Russian influence activities.

In the columns of August’s Postimees, Karmo Tüür wrote about the USA’s plan to resolutely oppose and deal with Russian influence activities against Europe and Eurasia. They have allocated $250 million USD for this purpose.

Tüür writes: „ Work assignments are briefly outlined in the following points: to assist in protecting critical infrastructures of targeted countries, including electoral mechanisms against cyber- attacks; to fight against corruption and strengthen legal systems; to deal with the human crisis situations in Georgia and Ukraine due to Russia’s invasions; promote the spread of legal and political knowledge; help fight Russian propaganda; identify and disclose disinformation. Reports on Russian controlled media and Russian sponsored influence activities must be documented 90 days after the signing of the act and every year there after.“

A Zimbabwe daily newspaper accuses Estonia of discrimination against Russians.

The national newspaper of Zimbabwe, The Herald wrote in August about the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s visit to Estonia. The author of the story, Peter Schwarz in his comments on the visit accused Steinmeier of threatening Russia, fostering Estonian nationalism as well as the systematic discrimination of the Russian- speaking population of Estonia and much more.

The news quotes Postimees.

Marko Mihkelson is worried: Is Estonian society still resistant to hostile Russian influence activities?

He reflects on the effectiveness of Russian influence activities in a brief opinion piece.

Mihkelson writes: „ Last week I directly experienced how on Russian Television a „lost“ acquaintance (former Estonian prisoner of the Siberian Gulags) literally with eyes wide open preached Russian propaganda. There are actually many examples, that I have seen while meeting individuals throughout Estonia (a la- it is better to live under the rule of Russia than have a dark-skinned neighbour or Russia will conquer us anyways so why not already surrender).

Attack of False domains

In August, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab published an analysis of behaviour patterns on how the use of false domains, similar to real global news feeds are produced and used to disburse false news.

One example was a circulated false news piece on 13. August, which appeared as if it had originally come from The Guardian. This was accomplished by registering the domain theguardıan.com, where a symbol “ı” from the Turkish alphabet was used instead of the correct one and a copy of the original Guardian home page layout was posted. The false paper was able to make it seem as if it were referencing all types of respectable news channels when in reality the product was all completely counterfeit. The widespread circulation of this news was stopped quickly elsewhere in the world but the Russian propaganda web did not allow the uncovering of the false source to be a hindrance there and kept distributing news from that source.

The gathering at Blue Hills once again received attention

Just as it has now become a tradition to criticize Estonia for organising Erna Trek, Estonia also receives criticism for the annual 20. Estonian Waffen SS Grenadiers get together. It was no different this year and it was discussed again in Russian media channels.

The Baltic nation are out of the elite club. Really?

Just as clever individuals can put together dirty words from the letters of any text, the Russian propaganda media, referencing the Neue Zürcher Zeitung was able to write about the Baltic nations being excluded from elite clubs.

The German newspaper pushed the tweaks of former Latvian Foreign Minister and Defence Minister and now member of the European Parliament, Artis Pabriks and wrote a story about the Baltic nation’s aspirations on becoming Nordic nations.  The story has a detailed analysis on whether the „Nordic nation model“is at all sustainable and working enough to be worthwhile to pursue it.

ETV+ Electoral propaganda suitability for schools

Tartu University, Narva college director Kristina Kallas and chairperson of the political fraction “Ühtne Narva”, Aleksei Voronin were in the studio.

Clip begins at 12:44

 

Photos: screen shots from publisher’s websites.