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Friday, 26.04.2024, 00:23
Evidence shows Russia funding, controlling content of Baltnews websites in Baltic states
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.