Aggressive rhetoric from Russian and Belarusian officials and propagandists was aimed at discrediting NATO and the NATO summit in Washington, Lithuania’s defense and foreign policy, and undermining Lithuania’s confidence in the Alliance. NATO is further portrayed as an aggressive military bloc that is not inclined to peace, hostile to Russia. In its intensity, the intensity of hostile informational actions of Russia and Belarus at this meeting was not inferior to last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius.
Propagandists of Russia and Belarus constantly emphasize that they themselves are “peacefully disposed towards NATO or their neighbors”, but hostility and aggression are directed precisely against themselves. Therefore, the Baltic Connection 24 exercises held in Lithuania, during which the “Patriot” air defense systems were deployed, were presented in the information environment of Russia and Belarus as “preparation for aggression”.
Not only that, the propagandists actively communicated about the strengthening of Lithuania’s military capabilities, highlighting defense financing and plans to establish countermobility parks. On these topics, one of two lines of communication was followed – Lithuania is intensively preparing not for defense, but for attack, or that Lithuania’s efforts, in the event of a real war, would be insignificant. In the latter context, it was also regularly reminded that NATO would not defend the Baltic States.
In July, a significant informational pressure was recorded from Belarusian propagandists in order to present Lithuania as an undemocratic, aggressive state. First of all, it was aimed to implement this through the topic of illegal migrants, after the release of a film about the allegedly brutal treatment of migrants in Lithuania, Poland and Latvia.
There was also an attempt to “raise the temperature” in the information space after a multi-part interview with the former Belarusian opposition activist Olga Tiškevič, who returned to Minsk, in which she talked about the plans of her former comrades residing in Lithuania to carry out attacks against objects in Belarus.
2024-08-15 10:18:47