RECOMMENDED READING: “Russia’s Footprint in the Nordic-Baltic Information Environment 2019/2020”

The NATO Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cen­tre of Excel­lence, a NATO-accred­it­ed think-tank, has pub­lished a com­pre­hen­sive report titled “Rus­si­a’s Foot­print in the Nordic-Baltic Infor­ma­tion Envi­ron­ment 2019/2020.” The report begins

This is the sec­ond vol­ume issued in the frame­work of the project ‘Rus­si­a’s (Dis-)lnformation Cam­paigns in Nordic-Baltic Coun­tries’. This project was ini­ti­at­ed in 2016 as an ongo­ing effort to mon­i­tor and analyse Rus­si­a’s (dis )infor­ma­tion influ­ence in the Nordic-Baltic region, which includes Den­mark, Esto­nia, Fin­land, Ice­land, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Nor­way and Swe­den (the NB8). The first vol­ume was pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2018. Since then, we have con­tin­ued track­ing trends in the infor­ma­tion space of the NB8. On the basis of our reg­u­lar bian­nu­al fact find­ings sev­er­al trends have emerged. The sto­ries pushed by the Krem­lin most often revolve around:

• Manip­u­la­tion with facts sur­round­ing World War II;
• Attempts to rewrite the his­to­ry of the NB8 states;
• Exag­ger­at­ing the threat of immi­gra­tion to the NB8 societies;
• Accus­ing the gov­ern­ments, media and opin­ion lead­ers of the NB8 coun­tries of Russophobia,
• Accus­ing NB8 coun­tries of dis­crim­i­na­tion against Rus­si­a’s com­pa­tri­ots abroad’,
• Fram­ing NATO’s Enhanced For­ward Pres­ence in the Baltics and Poland as a threat to region­al security;
• Ques­tion­ing and under­min­ing nation­al or region­al infra­struc­ture projects.
• This pub­li­ca­tion includes four chap­ters that help to under­stand infor­ma­tion influ­ence in the NB8.

The GIOR has exten­sive­ly cov­ered Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts direct­ed at the US. We have also cov­ered Russ­ian efforts cen­tered on the UK and the Euro­pean Union.