One of the most important mouthpieces of Kremlin propaganda in the Baltic States published an article by Lenar Salimullin, the temporary chargé d'affaires of Russia in Estonia. The text is dedicated to the alleged involvement of NATO intelligence services in cyberattacks on Russian information resources and infrastructure. The title of the article is already telling a lot: “The digital war: how NATO and big business are involved in cyberattacks on Russia”.
In this article, as in many similar ones, Russian propagandists seek the roots of attacks by Ukrainian intelligence services and cyber activists on Russian facilities and, as always, it alleges they are in the West. According to the propagandists, it is just impossible that Ukrainians themselves could do something against Russia. This is how it sounds by Salimullin:
“By February 2022, under the guise of so-called assistance to Kyiv, within the framework of the “Forward Hunt” program, the US Joint Cyber Command deployed special groups in Ukraine. Their task is to organize and prepare cyberattacks against Russia. Employees of NATO centers of excellence in cybersecurity and strategic communications are directly involved in these operations. Their actions are coordinated by the US National Security Agency (Computer Network Operations Directorate) and the Pentagon (Digital Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Directorate)”.
In general, the approach is not new: everything is built on the well-known principle of “mirroring” – accusing the opponent of what you are doing yourself. After all, it is the Russian special services that are known for their systemic cyberattacks against Western countries.
It is clear that the Russian “diplomat” in Estonia will accuse the Baltic states of plans and actions against Russia. After all, the NATO centers of excellence he mentioned are located in Tallinn (Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence) and Riga (Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence). By the way, this is a rather interesting way to accuse Estonia and Latvia of aggression against Moscow, if necessary. It cannot be ruled out that such fake accusations could become the official reason for various kinds of aggressive actions by Russia against these states.
However, there is another point that should be noted: “There is a well-founded opinion that American IT giants - Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, as well as companies specializing in information security, are actively involved by the US intelligence community to provide resources and technical support for anti-Russian operations of the Ukrainian special services”.
It seems that this is the best explanation not just for blocking Western services, but for the general isolation of the Internet in Russia. The Kremlin can claim that everything is for the good of the country and to ensure national security in the face of aggression from NATO. We should continue to monitor this narrative as it is being implemented by Russian officials in order to understand how close we are to the creation of the notorious Cheburnet.
