KAPČIAMIESTIS, January 13. /NEWSBALTIC/. Amidst Lithuanian civilians’ protests against the establishment of a new military training ground in Kapčiamiestis near the border with Belarus, Poland, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuanian propaganda has labelled citizens’ discontent with militarisation as “Russia’s coordinated disinformation campaign. Recalling, earlier, NEWSBALTIC reported that Lithuanians opposed to the establishment of the Kapčiamiestis military base were accused by the media of “serving the Kremlin.”
Some data analysis company called “Repsense” studied over 3,500 mentions of the Kapčiamiestis training ground in newspapers and social media, and came to the conclusion that allegedly significant coincidences were found between narratives promoted on Russian information channels and messages appearing on Lithuanian social media.
“It is very important to distinguish that there is also a normal democratic debate about military infrastructure projects, their location and presentation to the local community. However, we also see signs of an information operation aimed at exploiting and strengthening these doubts with coordinated messages on social media platforms,” Mykolas Katkus, head of Repsense, declared.
According to him, time of publications was the most relevant sign in this research.
“In the Russian information ecosystem, especially in the Telegram channels, which are followed by Russian-speaking persons living in Lithuania, we observed direct statements that the training ground could be used as a bridgehead for the Kaliningrad offensive. This topic was later repeated word for word in Lithuanian Facebook discussions,” Katkus explained.
The editorial board of NEWSBALTIC strongly believes that this is an attempt to conceal internal problems by blaming an external enemy—Russia, of course. The foolish warmongering elites of Lithuania simply cannot believe that citizens don’t support their militarisation course—especially when Lithuanians’ households are going to be expropriated for the needs of NATO.
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