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Baltics prepare to counter Moscow TV propaganda
Yahoo! ^ | JARI TANNER

Posted on 06/12/2014 3:36:00 AM PDT by wetphoenix

PALDISKI, Estonia (AP) — The Russian news broadcast takes broadsides at Ukraine, trumpeting claims that Ukrainian democracy has degenerated into fistfights between right-wing nationalists in Parliament.

Aleksander Danilov isn't watching the show in Vladimir Putin's Russian heartland. He's in Estonia, an EU country where there increasingly are fears that Russia may turn its sights next to the Baltic states after grabbing a chunk of Ukraine.

Danilov can choose from at least a dozen Russian TV channels via cable — and scores more if he could afford a satellite dish. Like many other ethnic Russians across the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the 55-year-old retiree doesn't speak the local language and prefers watching broadcasts from Moscow to the smattering of news shows and programs provided in Russian by national Baltic broadcasters.

The three Baltic nations watched with alarm as Russia took over Crimea and mobilized its military along Ukraine's eastern border, pledging to protect all Russians abroad.

Now the Baltics are moving to curtail Moscow's influence through the airwaves, heedful of the need to prevent pro-Kremlin agitation among the million Russian speakers who stayed after the Baltics regained independence following the Soviet collapse.

Latvia and Lithuania have temporarily banned some pro-Russian TV stations, including Moscow-based RTR Rossiya and RTR Planeta. They are now planning with Estonia to set up a joint Russian-language channel to counter Russian propaganda, hoping for financial assistance from the European Union.

Estonian Education Minister Jevgeni Ossinovski, of ethnic Russian background, said the project is "a matter of national priority" in a nation where Russian speakers make up around 28 percent of the 1.3 million population.

"It's a full-scale information war. The facts

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; Russia
KEYWORDS: democrats; kerry; obama; russia

1 posted on 06/12/2014 3:36:00 AM PDT by wetphoenix
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To: wetphoenix

And if Putin invades the Baltics, does anyone seriously believe that the gormless Obama will lift a finger?

He’s too busy promoting pan-Arabism and world Islam and mast*rb*ting for the fawning American media.

It’s a golden opporunity for Putin, and he knows it, too.


2 posted on 06/12/2014 5:13:37 AM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: wetphoenix

KEYWORDS: democrats; kerry; obama

Why?


3 posted on 06/12/2014 9:45:56 AM PDT by Krosan
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