Russia Releases Report on Soft Power Strategy in the Baltics

On 8 Jan­u­ary 2024, the Baltic News Net­work (BNN) report­ed that Rus­sia has released a 136-page ana­lyt­i­cal report detail­ing strate­gies to enhance its “soft pow­er” in the Baltic States. The report, unveiled by Pskov State Uni­ver­si­ty and pub­lished by Russ­ian his­to­ri­an Alek­san­dr Dyukov, empha­sizes the use of edu­ca­tion, cul­ture, and social net­works to bypass pro­pa­gan­da restric­tions. Notably, the report sug­gests exploit­ing plat­forms like Telegram and Vkon­tak­te, cit­ing pro-Russ­ian groups like “Baltic Antifas­cists” with over 15,000 fol­low­ers. The report also acknowl­edges the chal­lenges of pen­e­trat­ing the infor­ma­tion bub­ble in the Baltics, advo­cat­ing for meth­ods tar­get­ing Lat­vian, Eston­ian, and Lithuan­ian lan­guage speak­ers. Jānis Bērz­iņš, a researcher at the Lat­vian Nation­al Defence Acad­e­my, inter­prets these tac­tics as Rus­si­a’s shift from minor­i­ty-focused strate­gies to broad­er anti-West­ern pro­pa­gan­da, aim­ing to desta­bi­lize trust in demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and pro­mote Rus­sia-friend­ly pow­ers. This rev­e­la­tion is said to high­light Rus­si­a’s intent to trans­form neigh­bor­ing coun­tries into satel­lites, echo­ing its approach in Belarus and Hungary.