Hockey as defence against Russian ‘honey pots’
Bid to protect Canadian soldiers in Latvia
As Canada prepares to stand up a multinational NATO battle group here this summer, army commanders have come up with a plan to prevent their soldiers from being exploited by the Kremlin via “honey pots,” “gentlemen’s clubs” and other such temptations: hockey, hockey and more hockey.
The plan is for the 450 Canadian troops bound for Latvia — as part of a tripwire against Russian aggression — to be confined to their base, about a half-hour drive northeast of Riga, for the first few months after they arrive. This is partly because there will be much work to be done before the unit can be declared combat-ready. But there are also grave concerns that Russia will try to undermine the Canadian mission by attacking it with “kompromat” and “dezinformatsiya,” as it has already done with a similar NATO enhanced forward-presence battle group from Germany which is up and running in neighbouring Lithuania.
Even after the newcomers, mostly drawn from 1 Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, are certified sometime in August as operationally effective, they will only be allowed off base on “supervised cultural days,” the commander, Lt.Col. Wade Rutland, said after leading a live-fire exercise last week involving other NATO forces training in Latvia. Those excursions may include visits to museums, theatres, parks and restaurants.
But the centrepiece of the leisure activities will be hockey games against each other and against Latvian military and civilian teams at the four rinks near the base the Canadians will share with the Latvian army and a small number of soldiers from Albania, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Poland.
“There will be no 48-hour weekend passes,” the colonel said, referring to the good old days during the Cold War when Canadians stood watch against the Red Army in Germany.
German troops in Lithuania have already been targeted twice by Russian propagandists through what has become known as “hybrid warfare.” Within days of their arrival, emails claiming German troops had raped an underage Lithuanian girl were sent to a leading Lithuanian politician and reported on by local media outlets. Police investigated and concluded that there was no evidence at all to support such a claim. More recently a photo-shopped image of the German commander, Lt.-Col. Christoph Huber, appeared on a blog along with the fiction that he was a Russian spy who was “not loyal to NATO or to Lithuania, but is a strong supporter of Russian policy.”
Russia circulated similar fabrications when it seized Crimea from Ukraine. “We are taking it very seriously,” Rutland said. Every effort would be made to keep soldiers “on the straight path.”
The Canadian soldiers’ familiarization process for the mission has already begun with a series of detailed briefings about ways Russia may attempt to embarrass them.
Chief Warrant Officer Michael Forest, who has just spent three weeks in Latvia, is to be responsible for ensuring discipline. “We are educating our leadership to look for certain things and to try to avoid those situations where a provocation could happen,” the sergeant-major said. Because “a bright light will be shining on us all the time, we are going to set the conditions through policy. If you go for a pizza there will be a fire team, you will not be alone.”
Col. Ilmars Lejins, the Latvian infantry brigade commander assigned to work closely with Canadians said “the short answer is that we can expect many things” from Russia’s prolific propaganda machine. “Will it happen that there will be a Canadian with two heads and four eyes rampaging around Riga? Of course, there will be ‘news’ like that,” Lejins said. “How do you combat things like that? The first thing is to talk to each other and have common sense. Ask yourself if that is reliable. What the military will do, the Latvians and the Canadian Forces, will be to have a very straightforward two-way conversation with the press and Latvian citizens.”
Sanita Jemberga of the Baltic Centre for Investigative Journalism, who studies Russian dezinformatsiya and its effects, was certain that Kremlin trolls would seek ways to negatively portray the Canadian presence in Latvia.
“I would tell them to act sensibly,” she said. “You are not in a war zone. No one is going to blow you up. But there is a Russian modus operandi with the girls, the alcohol, etc. Just watch out. If you do something stupid, you will end up on Russian television. It is not a pleasant experience.”
Jemberga was amused by Canada’s strategy to use hockey to limit Russia’s ability to suggest the Canadians were misbehaving while off duty. The Canadian obsession is considered a great fit because Latvia is mad about hockey, too, as anyone knows who has watched the Winter Olympics, the World Championships or Dinamo Riga, which plays in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League.
“We looked for everyone we could find who is an A hockey player,” said Rutland, who plans to play himself. “We already have a game lined up for the combat-support unit.”
Several good-natured young Latvian soldiers taking part in last week’s exercise boasted that their side would beat the Canadian soldiers at hockey. Their commander, Lejins, diplomatically said that he expected the visitors would win. The Canadians would not offer any predictions.