The Russian media was full of news about USA soldiers being injured at Nurmsi Air Base

The fact that American paratroopers sustained injuries upon landing during the Swift Response Airborne jump exercise was reported over robustly in the Russian media. Propamon’s monitoring environment brought out 18 news clips dedicated to this topic from the twenty channels it reviews. In total, many dozens of short news items have been dedicated to this event in the Russian media.

Most of them are laconic news clips from Postimees news. Mark Naylor’s comments, a spokesperson for the US Embassy in Tallinn are also brought out in most of the news clips. Several publications spiced up the news with a derogatory title or a negative comment inside the text.

MK.ru, for example, titled a news clip, as “Estonia’s land surface is too hard for Americans”. The VPK, which focuses on war news, published a clip entitled “American paratroopers broke their bones while jumping in Estonia”. However, 5TV headlined their short news with “Ten US soldiers were injured in a scandalous exercise in Estonia”.

RG.ru added to the news clip a statement by Vladimir Džabarov, Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Federation Council, who called the Airborne jump a provocation.

Vzgljad added to the news clip that such large military exercises are burdening the Estonian economy.

Lithuanian Sputnik considered it necessary to add that Baltic politicians are interested in increasing the volume of such exercises referring to the “Russian threat”. Sergei Lavrov has said that they do not intend to attack anyone and use the mystical threat to increase arms sales and the placement of a large amount of military equipment by the Russian border.

Several news clips also include links to longer news stories about the exercise, focusing on Russian propaganda talking points and quoting, for example, military expert Oleksi Leonkov, Vladimir Džabarov, Sergei Lavrov, Konstantin Sivkov and others who accuse NATO of endangering Russia.

There are several reasons for this type of news to appear. All military-related foreign issues are mentioned in the Russian media. But this time it is possible to convey three very different messages in  the short news – “NATO is on Russia’s borders”; “NATO is coming here”, i.e. Estonia will not continue to be associated as part of NATO; “NATO forces are incompetent”, which helps to show the weakness of the enemy forces.

Photo: Screenshot of the publication