Since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, its propaganda has claimed that residents of the Baltic states are fleeing en masse to Russia and Belarus to escape “russophobia.” Re:Baltica investigation reveals different truths behind these narratives.

Hungary has protected two Kremlin-linked oligarchs from European Union (EU) sanctions. These individuals, who control the Riga Electrical Machinery Factory (RER), have been aiding the Russian army in its invasion of Ukraine, according to information obtained by Re:Baltica.

Russian-speaking Latvians should be pitted against Ukrainian refugees, while convincing others that confrontation with Russia leads to poverty. These plans were revealed in recently leaked documents from the Social Design Agency (SDA) — one of the commercialised “troll factories” that worked on behalf of the Kremlin. Latvia is the only Baltic state for which documents are found in this dataset. The planners of the information operations expressed disappointment in Latvia’s Russian speakers for being too negative in their reaction to Russia’s invasion. They called for using social media to build momentum, eventually leading to real-life action.

^{Organizations that contributed to this investigation: Re:Baltica (Re:Check), Delfi (Estonia), Delfi (Lithuania)}

This summer, misinformation that those in power are trying to drag the Baltic countries into a war against Russia intensified, especially in Lithuania and Estonia. Governments are allegedly considering sending troops to Ukraine, in Lithuania the foreign minister and his family are leaving the country, while Latvia is provoking its eastern neighbour with threats of a nuclear war. In this article, we explain who and how in the Baltic countries are spreading these falsehoods. 

What started as an ordinary day for a Latvian housewife became a significant national security breakthrough. A mysterious note found in her driveway has helped authorities uncover a series of sabotage acts linked to Russian intelligence.

If you wish to discredit the EU in the Baltic states, spread green lies and half-truths – for example, that the EU will immediately force everyone to drive electric cars, stop old cars from being repaired and ban heating with firewood. 

Accused of working with the Russian security service, Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka mockingly donned sunglasses at a press conference – as if in a spy movie. The accusations won’t be laughed off that easily: Re:Baltica has obtained almost 19,000 of Ždanoka’s e-mails detailing how she served the Kremlin.

MEP Ždanoka’s emails indicate that her assistant in the European Parliament was put forward by her contacts in Russia’s security service. 

“Tatyana, hello. This is Dmitry. Our conversation has had results. When do you plan to be in Moscow?” 

^{At an improvised rally in Riga on March 14, 2024, dozens of people demanded an end to the transit of manganese ore, leaving their handprints on a banner to remind of the role of this commodity in weapons production and the killings of Ukrainians. Photo: LETA}

Next week the European Commission will propose a ban on manganese ore shipments to Russia, which can be used in the manufacture of arms. Before EU takes decision, Re:Baltica reports who are the main exporters, who will bear the brunt and why Latvian state companies are still in this business.

^{Liepaja Bulk Terminal’s pier at Liepaja port. Photo: Andris Gertsons, Kurzemes Vards}

Re:Baltica for the first time publishes a list of the largest importers of Russian resources in Latvia since Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine. The main commodities are those shipment of which civil society protests against – grain, oil products and metal alloys.

_{As only one third of sanctions imposed on Russia refers also to Belarus, many of the banned goods get to Russia through Belarus. Photo: Latvian-Belarusian border checkpoint at Kaplava in 2021. LETA.}

While the government calls on businesses to “self-cleanse”, Latvia’s export to Russia has shrunk just a little bit after the two years of war. Re:Baltica names the largest exporters for the first time.

Latvia’s social media users recently encountered an unprecedented attack of bots. During it thousands of accounts suddenly started to speak rudimentary Latvian and defend hockey players who had played tournament in Russia despite the ban. This was the first operation of such scale in one of the Baltic languages and has led to speculation that it could be a test-run before European Parliament elections.

^{Illustration by James O’Brien, OCCRP}

The authorities have accused Temirov Live, a respected investigative outlet, of inciting mass unrest, and jailed nearly a dozen of its current and former employees. A palpable sense of fear has descended on this country, once known as the freest in the region.

January 16 was Aike Beishekeyeva’s twenty-third birthday — her mother Nazgul Matanayeva said they had planned to go shopping for a cake to share with her colleagues. 

Our children will be taught to have sex and become gay at school. Minors will have their sex changed without their parents’ consent, and the people enforcing the Istanbul Convention will remove children from their families. In the second half of 2023, the scaremongering about what disinformation spreaders describe as “gender ideology” returned to the political scene in Latvia.

All they wanted was fast cash, but what they got were prison terms. In recent years, the number of Lithuanians and Latvians arrested for illegally transporting migrants has risen sharply. This trend does not look likely to slow down. 

Whether their goal is to amass a following, oppose environmentally friendly policies, or resist what they perceive as “totalitarian global control”, a diverse group of disinformation spreaders has shifted its focus to the topic of climate change. Who comprises this group? Where do they source their talking points? And have they successfully deceived the Baltic population?

By banning Kremlin’s TV and online propaganda in the Baltics, the access to such resources has become more challenging only for those whose primary source used to be television. Now social media platforms have taken up that space,  among which “Telegram” stands out because it does not share data with governments and does not moderate disinformation and lies.

During the second quarter of the year the fact-checking efforts in the three Baltic states primarily concentrated on the war in Ukraine and the spread of Russian propaganda about it. The highest level of Ukraine-related disinformation was found in Lithuania, while Latvia and Estonia saw a decline. 

Since the owner is not on the sanctions list, Ministry of Justice claims there is nothing it can do.

Latvian appears to front the assets of sanctioned Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg.

Latvian investigators suspect the owner of “Clean World,” a well-known cleaning business that stretches across Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, of using the notorious bank to launder tens of millions of euros. Reporters looked into Eduard Apsit and his business.

How the police, the school and the neighbours in Daugavpils for years did not notice the paedophile, who was caught only thanks to an anonymous Re:Baltica reader. 

Many people in Latvia believe so, but Re:Baltica found no evidence that content moderators on Facebook would consciously delete posts showing support for Ukraine. But there is another problem—its content policies are designed in a way that it is practically impossible to express negative emotion when speaking about the war. The Kremlin only benefits from this. 

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Latvian security services  have opened more than 40 criminal probes for incitement of hate, undermining the interests of Latvia, violations of EU sanctions and other crimes, including ones that don’t have legal precedent. Some of the cases are dangerously close to restricting free speech

Latvia is the first of the Baltic states where a TikTok party has been elected to parliament. Before the elections, their star was an unemployed young woman with a high-school diploma, but her videos had received millions of likes. Even though the number of TikTok users is fairly similar in all of the Baltic states, in Latvia the platform is used by populist politicians spreading Kremlin-friendly messages. It doesn’t play a role in politics in Estonia and Lithuania yet.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Latvian State Security Service has started seven criminal investigations for supporting Moscow on TikTok or using the platform to spread ethnic hatred. Who are the voices from the Baltics that mirror Kremlin narratives there? And why is Lithuania and Estonia taking it easier?

Not long after imposing sanctions on wood imports from Russia and Belarus, Europe saw an influx of wood supposedly coming from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Authorities say sanctions-busters are increasingly mislabeling wood as Central Asian so they can keep bringing it in to the EU.

Re:Baltica is part of an international group of 80 journalists from 27 media outlets who are gathering new information on the assets of sanctioned Russian billionaires, servants and propagandists in Europe, USA, and elsewhere after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In few weeks, we found over 145 properties – villas, flats, yachts, private planes – worth over 17 billions US dollars. The Usmanov, Tokarev and Mazepin families own property in Latvia, but some of them won’t be touched until the sanctions are extended to the family members of Putin’s inner circle. 

On Jan 31, 2022, the last trains carrying sanctioned Belarussian potash fertilizers were supposed to cross Lithuanian territory. 

The regional court in Riga has found the owner of the Baltic – Russian media powerhouse and his Estonian side-kick guilty of breaching EU sanctions against Russia and fined over three million euros in the biggest criminal case of this kind the Baltic country has seen so far.

Despite harsh EU sanctions, Belarussian oil exports to Estonia reached record levels in 2021. Here’s how the trade, initiated by the oligarch nicknamed the ”energy wallet of Lukashenko”, has been set up.

The events organised by anti-vaxxers and Covid-19 restriction deniers, begs the question – who is paying for all of this? Until now it has been hard to find sources of organised, external funding so Re:Baltica looked into the main disinformation spreaders and the way that they live. 

The pandemic has escalated online harassment, especially aimed at journalists and healthcare workers. Yet in all three Baltic countries police don’t consider even publicly shared death threats as real enough, therefore action against perpetrators rarely follows. 

Latvia is the first of the Baltic States that has convicted a person who spreads fake news – he has been found guilty of hooliganism and incitement to hatred on social media. Meanwhile, Estonia and Lithuania are relying on educating society rather than handing out criminal penalties. 

Work visits to the U.S. described as “fuckery”, promises to “fix things” in the banking sector, disclosure of confidential information in a sauna and false testimony: a dropped case lifts the veil on how the former governor of the Bank of Latvia operated.

Until relatively recently, journalists generally considered the anti-vaccination movement to consist primarily of misguided new mothers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, this view has changed dramatically. Misinformation on vaccines is now being spread on social media by healthy living evangelists and other profiteers, people seeking to grow their political capital, and fans of Kremlin propaganda. 

Profit of the payday loans made Aigars Kesenfelds millionaire and gave him a chance to spread wings internationally. The turnover of his businesses now approaches 400 million euros a year. However, the plain sailing has run into difficulties in Kosovo and Armenia due to “abnormal superprofits”, and the companies related to him have lost licences. For this story, the least known Latvian millionaire is forced to leave the shadows and answer unpleasant questions.   

The case for the alleged breach of EU sanctions against Russia by the owner of the Baltic media-powerhouse which distributes popular Russia’s TV channels may end up being heard in court behind closed doors.

At a time when many people have lost their incomes due to Covid – 19 pandemic, the supervisory board of the enterprise responsible for building Rail Baltica had quietly envisaged to raise their salaries by 15 percent or 400 euros as of January next year. They gave up the idea only after journalists from Re:Baltica started to question the decision.

When in March of this year Re:Baltica’s Re:Check became official Facebook (FB) fact checkers and labeled the first false information, the main conspiracy theory propagators in Latvia were enraged.

This story is written by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which organized the FinCEN Files global investigation into the world of banks and money laundering and of which Re:Baltica is part.

• How a handful of secretive agencies mass-produce UK shell companies quietly owned by criminals and launders from former Soviet states.

This story is written by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which organized the FinCEN Files global investigation into the world of banks and money laundering and of which Re:Baltica is part.

This story is written by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which organized the FinCEN Files global investigation into the world of banks and money laundering and of which Re:Baltica is part.

From Ukraine to the United States, from Tunisia to Turkmenistan, a global ICIJ investigation details the punishing human cost of laundered trillions.

The leaked suspicious activity reports written by the US based banks to the country’s financial crime investigators reveal that Latvia was considered a high-risk jurisdiction for years.

2005 –  FinCEN warns Latvia about the increased risk of Latvian banking sector being used for money laundering and expresses special concerns regarding two of 23 Latvian banks. U.S. financial institutions were prohibited from opening or maintaining correspondent accounts at one of them – VEF Bank.

The FinCEN Files provide a glimpse of the Latvian banks used by the ousted Ukraine’s president Yanukovych, his associates and adversaries.

Russian aluminium tycoon Deripaska (52) moved more than $3 billion of suspicious origin through a small Latvian bank. 

An alleged breach of EU sanctions, and a possible fine of up to 10 million euros, casts doubt on the future of Baltic Media Alliance, one of the largest media holdings in the Baltic countries focusing on local Russian-speaking audiences.

Re:Baltica’s fact-checking and social media research lab Re: Check today became Facebook’s official fact-checking partner.

In Latvia, every third woman convicted of murder has killed her partner, who had been abusing her. Why judges mostly don’t consider a history of violence as a mitigating circumstance?

Last March, Santa’s former partner cut off her ear. Afterwards, he calmly walked out of her apartment, taking the ear with him, and went to the police. On the way, he threw the ear away but didn’t tell the police where. As a result, the 12 hours during which it could have been reattached were lost.

Battling to stay in the competition for building Estonia’s 5G network, the tech giant Huawei has hired a lobby firm with three ex-ministers on board in an attempt to use their political influence and push back the decision to exclude the Chinese company due to security concerns.

When the Baltic prime ministers meet in Tallinn this Friday, they need to agree how to speed up building of Rail Baltica as deadlines are being missed and costs are rising. Latvia and Estonia are blaming Lithuania for stalling the project, while it digs its heels defending own interests

The land expropriation is an essential part of the high-speed train line Rail Baltica (RB), but Latvia and Estonia lag behind the schedule. It is another risk for timely finish of the project

The opposition to the Baltic high-speed railway line is the loudest and most political in Estonia, while in Latvia and Lithuania it is mostly desperate landowners.

The future of Europe, as per Raivis Zeltits, the secretary-general of the National Alliance (NA), a Latvian government coalition party, looks like this. First, the EU will dissolve into several regional blocs while retaining formal unity. Latvia will find itself in a bloc called Intermarium, which will stretch from Crimean beaches to the Gulf of Riga.

This article continues our series dedicated to Latvia’s security in the light of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the beginning I which I witnessed in Slaviansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv, while working for US media. In our previous piece, we explored a group of athletes turned politicians, which reminded of organisations that were involved in pro-Russian separatist uprising in southeastern Ukraine. That story also revealed a possible conflict of interest in how Riga mayor’s office led by Nils Ushakov funded public organisations.

China’s investments in the Baltic countries are so far insignificant, but the Chinese have their eyes on large strategic infrastructure projects, developments that are simultaneously tempting and worrying to the Baltics.

Squeezed between geopolitics and wary of Chinese espionage threats, the Baltic countries look to Brussels for guidance on what to do with Huawei and their 5G networks

The rise of Chinese influence in the world – and its consequences – has been one of the main topics in international relations in recent years. The US trade war, Europe’s attempt to create a common policy against China’s attempts to establish special relations with groups within the EU, China’s massive investment program for building infrastructure to create new trade routes – it all applies to us, too.

The objectives of China’s soft power in the Baltic states are to prevent the rise of uncomfortable foreign policy issues like autonomy for Tibet and to disseminate Beijing’s worldview through Confucius Institutes.

A major donor of Latvia’s biggest pro-Russian party Harmony has received payments from offshore companies used in the Magnitsky affair and the Azerbaijani laundromat, but says he cannot remember a thing about it.

After almost a year of haggling Latvia’s financial sector supervisors have finally agreed how they will probe cleanliness of funds at ABLV, the bank which is about to be wound up following allegations of institutionalized money laundering. This process has gathered dark clouds on the horizon for Pēters Putniņš, Latvia’s chief financial supervisor.

This was the most difficult investigation in the 8-year history of Re:Baltica.

The mayor of Latvian capital, Nils Ušakovs, and one of the party’s KPV.LV leaders, Aldis Gobzems, have failed in their efforts to bring criminal proceedings for defamation against the journalists of Re:Baltica.

Yuri Stilve, who has been convicted of spying for Russia, was ordered to take pictures of petroleum product warehouses and a communications tower on the border, and to find out what kind of underwear Latvian soldiers wear.

A 20-year-old information technology (IT) student was recruited by Russia to spy against Estonia, but kicked to the curb when he got caught. From behind bars, he tells his tale to Re:Baltica.

Skype logs and other documents obtained by Re:Baltica, Postimees and Buzzfeed offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

It was supposed to be just another winter hunt for Sergejus Pusinas (35), a captain in the Lithuanian Air Force. Then a red light flashing in a fellow hunter’s pocket caught his eye. It triggered a series of events that finally led him to the point of no return.