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| Ibid. 566 Ibid. 567 Tomas Cizik, Russia Tailors Its Information Warfare to Specific Countries European Se- curity Journal, Nov. 6, 2017. Statement of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Former President of Estonia, The Modus Operandi and Toolbox of Russia and Other Autocracies for Undermining Democracies Throughout the World, Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, Marat. Edward Lucas, The Coming Storm Baltic Sea Security Report, Center for European Policy Analysis, at 11 (June 2015). net servers of the country’s government, security, banking, and media institutions were hit by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks for two straight weeks, causing many of their websites to go down. 564 Ilves believes the attack was coordinated by the Kremlin and executed by organized criminal groups, a public-private partnership with a state actor that paid mafiosos.’’ 565 As a senior former Pentagon official told The New Yorker, the attack showed that Russia was going to react in anew but aggressive way to perceived political slights.’’ 566 The Kremlin’s disinformation operations in the Baltics, especially in Latvia and Estonia, are mostly aimed at the countries Russian- speaking populations (which constitute nearly 27 percent of the population in Latvia and 25 percent in Estonia, compared to just under 6 percent in Lithuania). 567 After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government’s disinformation campaigns in the s were largely directed at post-communist states like Poland and the Baltics. While serving as Estonia’s ambassador to the United States in the first half of the s, Ilves recalled having tore- spond to Western diplomats who showed him false news stories about his country. At the time, he said, Russian government disinformation was primarily an exercise in providing new democracies extra work to debunk invented news.’’ 568 While a factor, these measures did not have much of an impact in societies accustomed to questioning the veracity of Soviet propaganda efforts, and their halfhearted nature reflects the sclerotic state of the Russian security services at the time. But over the past decade, the Kremlin has supercharged its disinformation operations in the Baltics. Those efforts, which also include the use of internet trolls and NGOs, seek to portray the countries as failures—blighted by emigration and poverty—and run by a sinister elite of Western puppets with ill-disguised fascist sympathies.’’ 569 In the Baltic states, the Kremlin’s influence operations in there- gion appear to seek several objectives • Divide the populations along ethnic lines to establish and maintain control over the local Russian diaspora, which can be used as a tool of influence. • Create mistrust among the general population toward their own governments by portraying them as ethnocratic regimes that are overseeing the rebirth of fascism. • Undermine Western values and democracy and promote populism and radicalism, especially by emphasizing the West’s degradation while playing up Russia’s growing prosperity. • Weaken or paralyze the alliances Baltic states belong to, like NATO and the EU, especially by portraying their governments VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018 Jkt PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. 9 REPORT FOREI-42327 with DISTILLER 102 570 Vladislava Vojtiskova et al., The Bear in Sheep’s Clothing Russia’s Government-Funded Organisations in the EU, Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, at 63 (July 2016). Mike Winnerstig Tools of Destablization: Russian Soft Power and Nonmilitary Influence in the Baltic States, Swedish Defense Research Agency, at 4 (Dec. 2014). 572 Ibid. 573 Download 0.63 Mb. Share with your friends:
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