Propaganda attacks, which did not prevail in the news

Today, it will be two months to the day that the propaganda monitoring robot Propamon showed the level „many“ – that is, the day where more than 20 items regarding Estonia appear on Russian media. As a rule, this is a high level of propaganda against Estonia. Such media storms have become regular nowadays, happening on an average of once a month.

Relative silence does not mean that the Kremlin’s media machine has forgotten us. Propaganda sites such as Baltnews and Sputnik also produced a number of opinion stories, fake news and half-truths about Estonia. These info bits are picked up by mediation sites such EADaily and fed for broadcast in high-volume media.

We bring here a selection of the most bizarre propaganda tidbits, which spread in the media jungle in September and October but did not turn into wider media events.

The Estonian media lies

On October 10. Holger Roonemaa wrote in Postimees about Aleksei Vasiliev, who was found guilty of spying and sentenced to jail. The story also caused an English language investigative story published in Re: Baltica with the title „The Spy Russia forgot“. These articles were reflected in the Kremlin propaganda media. For example, the Russian Embassy blamed the Estonian media of lying and confirmed that it would help Vassiljev in every way. Vladimir Linderman, a Sputnik co-worker in Latvia, a declared unwanted extremist individual in Estonia, was looking for contradictions in the articles, trying to make up conspiracy theories about the „spy phobias“ in Estonia. The Kremlin media has been already trying to give the impression that Vassiljev is an innocent man and that Estonia had no reason to incarcerate him since his arrest.

Ukrainian workers in Estonia are thought to be terrorists

At the beginning of October, a thought piece story by Russian political scientist Dmitri Solonnikov was circulating, he said that Ukrainians working in Estonia are no different from terrorists. Ukrainians may endanger the people of Estonia, as they have experiences of armed conflicts in their own country. The story strives to create a gap between different ethnic groups. Propaganda techniques are used, where the accusations get a beginning from an expert’s uncertain „opinions“. Sentence breaks are amplified in specific title tags, creating fake news. For example, such a technique was blown into a big lie, as if Estonia was planning to attack Russian nuclear power plants.

Nuclear weapons in Estonia

In September, Sputnik and Baltnews attempted to spread a headline from the Russian media, that the people of Estonia would like nuclear weapons here. A group calling themselves, Neutral Estonia came up with the idea. A Facebook community, with the same name does not reveal whom we are dealing with. As of today the self named international movement’s website is not functioning but by using Google cache you can read their previously open statements; „ If you want, you can call us an anonymous troll factory“. „We are fed up with the continuous terrible life in Russia and the constant hacking of Russia“. „ We no longer have to spend hundreds of millions on Defence every year“. According to Propastop, the group is trying to win attention in the media with strong headlines. Whether they are provocateurs and promoters of Kremlin’s goals, still needs to be clarified.

The USA is developing Biological weapons in Estonia

We have previously written about a conspiracy theory, in which the USA is working on biological weapons in Russia’s neighbouring countries. In September, the topic was developed by Russia’s army media channel, Zvezda. The theory is wrapped up around the „Luger Center“, a US Senator, Richard Luger’s initiated organization, that promotes biological weapons. Conspiracy theorist, Georgia’s opposition Politian, Igor Giorgadze, states that there are dozens of these laboratories in Georgia. The topic is marginally related to Estonia, in that according to the story, there are these laboratories in Estonia as well. No evidence or documentation to support this claim has come forth.

 Russia should claim compensation from Estonia

In the propaganda media, the topic of compensations for occupation losses continues to be low in interest. All of the written pieces unite in showing that there was no occupation in Estonia, how can you claim any losses then. For example, an article in Rebaltika talks about „ The white paper on Occupation“ and calls its content absurd. A co-author of Vzglady, Anton Krlovo is trying to spread the concept, that actually Russia has reasons to demand compensation from Estonia.

The screenshots in the pictures are from the articles cited in the story.