„The pro-Kremlin media attack personally people who investigate pro-Kremlin trolls” – said Jessikka Aro, Finish investigative journalist during the conference “Future of Transatlantic Security” organised in Tallinn (Estonia) by the European Liberal Forum. „What is particularly dangerous are the stories which find their way into the mainstream media. Therefore, the short-term strategy that should be implemented to defend against pro-Kremlin disinformation, should be to liaise with the mainstream media and inform them about disinformation” – said Antoni Wierzejski, Centre for International Relations’ analyst. He moderated a panel entitled „Propaganda and Information War in the EU: Are We Doing Enough?”.
Dr Bartłomiej Nowak, CIR’s expert and lecturer at the Vistula university was also present at the conference. The participants had an opportunity to meet the Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivasem. „The Czech Republic is building a Hybrid Threat Centre which will become operational from the next year. They will do public alerts and weekly trend analyses both for the government and for the public. It will also train other government bodies what the disinformation practices look like and how government can defend against influence operations. It can be seen from what happened in case of Brexit referendum and US elections that Russian activities to manipulate debate have been very successful. If we have democratic state and we want to have free and fair elections, we cannot have hostile activities to manipulate our elections” – said Jakub Janda, the Deputy Director of the European Values think tank. Todor Yamalov, a senior analyst at the Centre for the Study of Democracy in Bulgaria highlighted the fact that in his country exist many instruments of Russian influence. „Russian corporations invest in media and content providers but also in companies which are big advertisers, like telecoms” – he said.
