A robot styled after Yulia Tymoshenko; a 17th‑century Muscovite guardsman sneering at Europe’s “effeminate” men; the chance to step into the boots of a modern Russian soldier invading Ukraine — all of this appears in video games released in Russia over the past four years.
Police in Riga on Thursday detained Arto Autio,a Finnish national previously listed on Interpol’s wanted notices, whom Finland seeks to prosecute in the country’s largest corruption scandal and who owns property in Latvia. The arrest was confirmed to Re:Baltica by Latvia’s Prosecutor General’s Office, as well as by eyewitnesses and individuals connected to Autio’s business activities.
Sanctioned Russian oligarch Pyotr Aven has been visited in Latvia by a high-ranking priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, who at the time represented its interests in Hungary, according to information available to Re:Baltica. Hungary regularly lobbies for Aven's removal from the European Union (EU) sanctions list.
The fight against wind turbines and imaginary mosques, stories of stolen elections – in the local elections, Estonian populists used the same themes as their Latvian counterparts.
Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) was expected to become a tool that would force social media giants like Facebook and TikTok to follow their own rules and make the online space safer. However, an experiment reveals that, in practice, platforms often treat user complaints about illegal content as a formality. In the Baltics, they respond almost exclusively to regulators’ requests, if at all.
Re:Baltica uncovers the path of the sabotage packages masterminded by Russian special services through Latvian capital Riga and their coordinator with at least two forged passports. The Latvian non-citizen, who was arrested for delivering the packages to Vilnius, could face a life sentence.
With growing efforts to curb climate change and the introduction of new environmental requirements for agriculture, misinformation about these issues is also on the rise. Both social media disinformers and populist politicians are exploiting the topic, mainly by spreading fear that farmers will be unable to meet these requirements, supposedly leading to food shortages. Why are such messages becoming increasingly widespread?