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#GUARDIANS: UPDATE ON THE KREMLIN'S INFLUENCE IN CENTRAL EUROPE
Issue #4
Poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a hundred times different

In August, Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned during a flight. He was hospitalized in Omsk afterwards and later evacuated to Berlin. Several European laboratories, including French, Swedish and German concluded after their investigation that he was poisoned by a Novichok-class nerve agent. This incident has been largely covered by Russian channels as well as by disinformation websites in Central Europe, which offered numerous speculations or even outright conspiracy theories about the cause of the incident.

Czech-language version of the official Russian channel Sputnik informed about the event almost daily during the weeks after the poisoning, praising Russian doctors for their approach and at the same time questioning the conclusions of German doctors that Navalny has really been poisoned. Several theories about who was behind the poisoning appeared on various channels, often arguing that if the Russian Federation was behind the poisoning, Alexei Navalny would be dead already. Other theories about why Navalny got sick appeared, including accusing Navalny of using drugs or suggesting he was infected by Covid-19.

Western secret services were accused of orchestrating the poisoning, including wild conspiracies about a mysterious woman from Britain who accompanied Navalny, “connecting” the poisoning for example to MI-6.

Many of the disinformation narratives flowing from the disinformation websites have been directly inspired by official Russian statements and channels, which continued to spread disinformation about Navalny’s health, deny his version of poisoning, and proposing various versions of the event. According to some of the sources, it was either not poisoning at all, or if it was, then not by Novichok, or perhaps Navalny even poisoned himself.

Poland’s role in Europe: The great conquest?

The role of Poland in Europe and its national interests have been largely misinterpreted lately on Russian disinformation channels.

The Russian agency Regnum suggested that Poland and Lithuania are “preparing to leave the EU.” They argue that Warsaw and Vilnius “are developing an alternative integration project – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.” According to the source, that is a manifestation of “Polish revisionism in the East.”

On the other hand, an article which appeared on the opednews-com portal, suggests that Poland is in fact planning to annex the territory of Lithuania. According to the author, the polish government is trying to create conditions, in which Lithuania will be politically and militarily dependent on Poland, which will ultimately lead to the unification of Lithuanian territory with Poland under the pretext of uniting efforts against Russia.

Those wild theories about Polish interest are drawn from the context of cooperation within the Lublin Triangle, a new regional initiative signed by the ministers of foreign affairs of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.

However, unification/annexation of Lithuania seems to be only one of the several territorial goals of Poland in recent months. In the beginning of September, the “60 minutes” program broadcasted by Russian public television entertained a discussion where it was stated that Poland intends to annex part of Belarus.

Some of the Polish language channels and social media accounts were hacked later in September in order to spread the narrative that Poland and Lithuania urge NATO to send troops to Belarus and that they have called on the EU to create a European peacekeeping force and deploy it to Belarus.

According to other sources, Poland is not only trying to abuse the protests in Belarus to invade and annex its territory, but also orchestrated the whole thing in the first place. Former officer of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU), Col. Siergiej Kozlov, told Komsomolskaya Pravda that the mass protests in Belarus are controlled by the Central Group of Psychological Activities (PsyOpS) in Bydgoszcz. He also stated that Polish intelligence recruits and deploys Ukrainian saboteurs in Belarus on behalf of the United States. Those statements have been duplicated by several pro-Kremlin channels in Poland.

Furthermore, another disinformation was spread about Polish Catholics trying to incite riots in Belarus. These reports suggest that Poland is interfering in the Belarusian presidential election through Catholics who are trying to initiate riots and mass protests in Belarus. According to this narrative, the Catholic institutions and priests in Belarus have been bought by the West and are to be governed by rules imposed from outside Belarus.

Recommendations

The Russian Federation continues to undermine democratic processes in Eastern European countries, while conducting aggressive disinformation campaigns targeting the EU Member States. Such behaviour will continue unless the costs are raised for the Kremlin.

European allies should significantly harden their approach to personal and financial sanctions against Russian hostilities. Leaders of Russian disinformation efforts should be personally sanctioned, so that each of them understands that conducting hostilities against European democracies has personal consequences.

All European countries should stop legitimising Russian disinformation tools posing as “journalistic platforms”. Communication channels effectively run by the Russian government, be it RT, Sputnik, or Russian state-run TV channels, do not represent journalism, they merely pretend to. Therefore, European countries should not consider them to represent free media; they should ban them from press conferences and not give access that is granted only to journalists, which they are not. This would also send a clear message that working for the Russian government is a one-way street for any journalist. No Western public official should ever legitimise these entities with an interview.

This newsletter includes outputs from the project of the European Values Center for Security Policy focused on training non-governmental sector representatives, including investigators and bloggers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. More information can be found on our website.

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European Values Center for Security Policy

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