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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 28.03.2024, 14:36

Evidence shows Russia funding, controlling content of Baltnews websites in Baltic states

BC, Riga, 30.08.2018.Print version
Materials of court proceedings have provided evidence to suggest that Russian propagandists have been funding and controlling the content of Baltnews Russian-language news websites in the Baltic states, informs LETA referring to the Re: Baltica investigative journalism outlet and Estonia’s Postimees report.

The materials were obtained from the tax-evasion case of Alexander Kornilov, editor of baltnews.ee in Estonia.


According to Re:Baltica and Postimees, the materials of the court proceedings include transcripts of conversations on Skype and copies of contracts showing that Alexander Svyazin of Moscow’s Rossiya Segodnya regularly instructed Baltnews staff in the Baltic countries as to what and how they should write.


The Baltnews websites received their funding from go-between firms registered outside Russia, like the Netherlands-registered Media Capital Holdings B.V., Cyprus-registered Barsoline Ventures Ltd., and Serbia-registered SPN Media Solutions.


Svyazin provided his instructions to the Baltnews employees via Skype and reports about publications were sent to the go-between firms. To boost their readership, the Baltnews editors bought clicks and even tried buying comments from Russian troll factories.


According to Re:Baltica, the Latvian outlet of Baltnews has been turning over around 100,000 euros a year, even though there are virtually no advertisements on website.


Andrejs Jakovlevs, the former editor in chief of Baltnews.lv, refused to reveal the website’s source of income to Re:Baltica and denied that someone had dictated what the journalists should write about. The news outlet had an agreement with Russia’s RIA Novosti news service, but that only meant “free of charge exchange of content”, he said.


Eriks Cinkus, deputy head of the Latvian Security Police, confirmed to Re:Baltica that Latvia’s Baltnews.lv was a Russian-funded site and that money transfers from foreign firms were its principal source of income.


Cinkus said that there were reasons to believe that the authors the content appearing at Baltnews.lv reported to Russia and adjusted the content of their articles to Russia’s geopolitical interests. “The Security Police noted already earlier that unlike Sputnik, baltnews.lv tried to conceal its links with Russia. According to the service’s assessment, the objective of baltnews.lv was, under the guise of impartiality, to generate content that would suit Russia’s interests,” Cinkus said.


Lithuanian security services have drawn similar conclusions, identifying Baltnews and Sputnik as two channels for spreading Kremling propaganda in the Baltics.


The study was carried out by an international team of journalists from Postimees, Re: Baltica, Lithuania’s 15min news site, Serbia’s KRIK and US news outlet BuzzFeed News.

 






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