DISINFORMATION WAR IN LATVIA.
The 450 Canadian troops stationed in Latvia face little danger from actual Russian military forces, which remain for now safely ensconced on the other side of the border.
But they have been the target of repeated information-warfare salvos in the five months since they arrived in the tiny Baltic country, as fake news designed to discredit NATO forces is routinely disseminated online, say Latvian and Canadian officials.
The disinformation ranges from stories about Canadians being accommodated in luxury apartments at local taxpayers’ expense, to images that purport to show them littering indiscriminately or fixated on buying beer, Latvia’s defence minister told the National Post this week.
And the campaign began with stories suggesting Russell Williams, the former air force colonel and convicted serial killer, still commanded Canada’s biggest airbase.
In response, close to a dozen Canadian soldiers in Latvia have been tasked to keep tabs on the propaganda disseminated against them, a Canadian Forces spokesman said.
“This (disinformation) happens frequently,” said Janis Garisons, Latvia’s state secretary of defence, in an interview while visiting the Toronto-based McKenzie Institute. “People see such news and they get angry and things like that. If you don’t stop it, then you’ve got problems.”
The Canadian soldiers lead a multinational NATO battle group in Latvia, a nation of two million on Russia’s western flank. It’s a branch of Enhanced Forward Presence, the program launched last year amid fears that Russia’s incursions into Ukraine could be repeated elsewhere in the former communist bloc.
Despite reports of discontent among Latvians — almost a third of whom are ethnic Russians — polling suggests more than 60 per cent back the NATO presence, and Canadian troops specifically have been warmly received, said the minister.
“We have certainly seen a variety of activity on the internet aimed at discrediting us and our partners,” said Capt. Kirk Sullivan, public affairs officer with the Forces’ joint operations command. “A lot of our efforts are geared toward monitoring that coverage, ensuring we remain aware of it, advising our leadership and our commanders that an appropriate response is required.”
Information-warfare tactics have become a hot topic worldwide of late, but “it’s somewhat new for the Canadian Armed Forces,” he said.
Just a week ago, pictures surfaced online that purported to depict Canadian troops buying large quantities of beer in Latvian shops, said Garisons. In fact, the photos had been taken three years earlier and featured American soldiers.
“One lady published on Facebook a conversation with a taxi driver, who was telling her all Canadian troops, foreign troops were not living in camps, they were living in luxury apartments, and our government is paying for it,” Garisons added. “We saw immediately that it is spreading and we reacted immediately when we saw that might be a problem.”
In fact, only eight members of the Canadian contingent are living in civilian accommodation — and at Canada’s expense, said Sullivan.
Another episode featured a photograph of discarded water bottles and ration packages, on a Russian-language pet lover’s Facebook page as the work of current NATO troops. Research revealed the picture was taken long before they arrived, yet it soon ended up in mainstream Latvian media.
“Nobody checked whether the picture is true, who the person posting it was, but it came back as big news — ‘Look what NATO is doing in Latvia,’ ” said Rolands Henins, director of Latvia’s defence policy department.
A Russian-language blog post suggested NATO troops in Latvia were “weak, p-ssy, gay, losers, couldn’t find job in any other field.”
One attack that fell flat alleged soon after the Canadians’ arrival in June that they were “fascists,” Garisons said.