“I talk and negotiate with Riga, with Oleg Solodov and others. Even the money that we [the City of Tallinn] pay goes to Riga, not to Tallinn”, says Lev Vaino, referring to the 425,000 euro contract for the production and transmission of three different shows on Pervõi Baltiiski Kanal – “Our capital” (“Наша столица”), “Good morning Tallinn” (“Доброе утро, Таллинн!”) and “Russian question” (Русский вопрос”). The City of Tallinn is a trusted client of PBK and almost the same amount of money (425,382 euro) was paid again in 2012 for PBK to continue producing the same programmes.

In the nineties he was being hounded by irate depositors and the Prosecutor’s Office and was even forced to leave Latvia, but he still returned and created a media empire, which has an audience of millions in the Baltics. The mayors of Riga and Tallinn can thank him for their positions – the head of First Baltic Channel, Oleg Solodov or even people in Moscow to whom Solodov owes a debt of gratitude to the latter for his exclusive access to the lucrative television business.

“Russia uses its compatriots’ policy as a way of exerting soft power on neighboring countries. In order to reach as wide a group as possible, Russian policy-makers developed the concept of the “Russian World” – already in 2010 researcher Andris Kudors (Center for Est European Policy Studies) already warned about Russia’s new foreign policy by using “soft power”.