Armands Astukevičs, Researcher at the Centre for East European policy studies
Belarus continues to actively target its Western neighbours through informational influence and disinformation campaigns. While the classic theme is the hybrid migration operation on the Belarus’s border with EU member states, in recent months the military threat dimension has been increasingly emphasised in Belarus’s false messaging. Such informational influence is a part of a broader strategy, the primary target audience of which is mostly the Belarusian public itself, aimed at sowing confusion and constructing threats, thus manipulating public opinion and diverting attention from internal political problems.
Imaginary threats from NATO
In April this year, Ivan Tertel, head of the Belarusian State Security Committee, announced that he and his colleagues from other security services had managed to prevent combat drone strikes from Lithuanian territory against objects in Minsk. Also Tertel said that with state support Lithuania has become the base and training camp for the radical Belarusian opposition to carry out terrorist attacks in Belarus. Worthy of mention is the fact that Tertel’s widely circulated statements were made at a meeting of the Belarus People’s Assembly – the Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko recently became its president. One of the issues on the meeting agenda was to approve the national security concept and military doctrine of Belarus.
Given the sensational nature of the issue, it was widely spread not only in the Belarusian, but also in the Russian state-controlled media and propaganda channels. Of course, what Tertel says lacks any concrete details or evidence of the truth of such statements, because understandably there simply aren’t any. These statements were also clearly rejected by the Lithuanian side, calling them completely false. From a rational point of view, it is also impossible to justify what would be the purpose and need of Lithuania as a NATO member to launch an attack on the territory of Belarus.
Moreover, the absence of any reaction from Belarus to an incident as serious as a direct military attack on its territory only points to the falsity of the allegations. Especially in view of the rhetoric previously expressed by Belarusian officials that any military intervention by NATO countries in Belarus would result in an immediate military response by Belarus.
In general, such messages about the efforts of NATO countries, especially Poland and Lithuania, to allegedly carry out military aggression and destabilise the situation in Belarus are not new. Spreading such messages often coincides with wider NATO military exercises in the region, which, unlike those of Belarus and Russia, are aimed at legitimate defensive rather than offensive operations.
In this case, the announcement coincides with the “Brave Grifin 24/II” exercises, joint Polish-Lithuanian exercises to test military readiness and measures to defend the Suwalki Corridor.
In addition to this announcement, in March this year Lukashenko went on a combat readiness inspection visit to the Grodno region of Belarus, where representatives of the Belarusian Armed Forces presented the current threat situation. Among the messages presented was the thesis that war will always be economically advantageous for someone – meaning the West – and that Belarus must not relax, otherwise an attack from NATO could follow.
Understandably, with such statements Belarusian officials are trying to discredit NATO’s defence measures and exercises, creating a false impression of an increase of military threats to Belarus. What is not mentioned among these disinformation messages is the fact that NATO is, at its core, a collective defence organisation and its underlying North Atlantic Treaty does not imply an unprovoked aggressive military action against the Alliance’s neighbours.
These examples in a broader context provide understanding of the purpose of these messages. On the one hand, to create a sense of threat in society, which would justify the need for society to rally around Lukashenko as a guarantor of safety and stability and explain the changes, aimed at growing repressions against Belarusians. On the other hand, it is a possibility to present Belarusian defence and security service officials as heroes, whose work has prevented the threat. However, it is important to mention that they are fundamentally aimed at the Belarusian audience. Considering the absurdity of these statements, it is not surprising that they reach a foreign information space.
Fake experts on the guard of the Belarusian regime
One of the current ways in which Belarus spreads its disinformation messages is through so-called fake experts. Often these are people that can be called “useful idiots” – they are anti-Latvian because of their personal or political beliefs and they themselves seem to have fallen for the propaganda hook of the authoritarian regimes.
False or distorted facts about the backgrounds and expertise of fake experts are often used to maintain their credibility, identifying them as journalists, think tanks or academics. These individuals are willing to invest in the propaganda of authoritarian regimes, whether for material reasons or out of personal conviction.
One such fake expert is Ruslan Pankratov, a former member of the Riga City Council, who fled Latvia when he was accused of inciting national hatred and hatred against Ukrainians. Now Pankratov is often seen as a “Latvian expert” on both Russian and Belarusian propaganda channels.
In April, in an interview with “Sputnik” Pankratov criticised Latvia’s adopted amendments to the Immigration Law, which require Russian citizens permanently residing in Latvia to pass a state language exam. Classically, according to Pankratov, the Latvian government’s policy is openly fascist and is comparable to deportations. But it does not end there. In fact, this is not a policy implemented sovereignly by Latvia, but a psychological operation overseen by the US and the UK against Russia and the Russian-speaking population.
The second fake expert who shared his thoughts on what is happening in Latvia and the secrets of the Belarusian success story was Solomon Bernstein – a blogger from Latvia that moved to Belarus.
In an hour-long interview with the Belarusian state media agency “Belta” Bernstein paints a catastrophic picture of life in Latvia, starting with Latvia’s democratic and developmental shortcomings and ending with the connection of Latvian history and governance with Nazi Germany. Admittedly, Bernstein is rather cliched and not very original in his reasoning. He justifies it with a higher tax burden than in any other country. He also mentions “good” Soviet times, when there were investments into Latvia and it became a developed country – as opposed to being a part of the European Union, which with its poor conditions turned Latvia into a noncompetitive periphery.
Lastly, the Baltic states and Ukraine, according to him, are not independent and sovereign in their decision-making, but are seen as minions of the West, deliberately aligned against Russia and Belarus. These arguments that have been refuted many times are simply not true. Meanwhile, all this is juxtaposed with the success story of Belarus’s development, which was achieved thanks to Alexander Lukashenko’s leadership and concern for the everyday needs of ordinary people. In the middle of all of this, he mentions Russia’s war against Ukraine as a rational and understandable move by Russia.
The use of such fake experts in Belarus’s informational influence and disinformation activities can be explained by several reasons. Mainly, it is a way to support the messages of Belarusian officials and state-controlled media, thus creating an image of legitimacy and credibility of the claims they make. It also allows new themes and perspectives to be brought into the information space that would be otherwise naturally impossible.
In these cases, the messages conveyed by the fake experts were mainly aimed at the local Belarusian audience in an attempt to portray Belarus’s neighbouring countries as failed states, thus trying to contrast and raise the image of the Belarusian state in the eyes of its citizens. However, secondarily, the message is also aimed at people in Latvia and other countries that due to personal reasons or political views might have a positive attitude towards it and believe in the imaginary success story of Belarus. This can be an effective method of outreach, but only until people have personally experienced the reality on the other side of the Belarusian border.
* Material first published on Delfi.lv
* The creation of this fact-checking material was funded by the European Media and Information Foundation, managed by the “Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation”.
