Russia is intensifying its disinformation operations and increasingly trying to involve young people willing to carry out tasks even for small amounts of money, reports LTV.
Russian intelligence agencies use residents of Latvia to spread narratives created by them, recruiting them through channels on Telegram or during trips to Russia. Typical performers of these tasks are people with low incomes and those looking to earn some extra money; often, they are young people.
According to Latvian security services, Russia is making significant efforts to ensure that its propaganda reaches and influences Latvian society. "The Fund for Supporting Compatriots Abroad (the so-called Pravfond), which is part of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is used to finance Russian influence activities in the Baltic States. This fund also pays for the services of lawyers in court cases where the defendants are pro-Kremlin activists from the Baltic States," reports the Security Police (SP).
The SP estimates that "there are no doubts about Russia's attempts to provide funding to pro-Kremlin activists residing in Latvia through cash, cryptocurrencies, or new organizations that are formally not subject to international sanctions and are not linked to the Russian government."
As noted by LTV, although propaganda messages are created by intelligence agencies in Russia, distributors are also recruited in Latvia for their dissemination. According to the Prosecutor of the General Prosecutor's Office, Mārtiņš Jansons, there have been cases where, through a long chain, Russian intelligence agencies assign tasks via Telegram to print leaflets with offensive messages about Latvia and its security services and then post them in various cities in Latvia.
The prosecutor also noted that recently there have been assignments to distribute texts in Ukrainian to create a false impression that Ukrainians living in Latvia are opposing Russian-speaking residents.
For such "jobs," young people, individuals without stable incomes, and those motivated by money rather than ideology are usually recruited. "Thus, in fact, people are willing to risk criminal liability for 15 euros, sometimes for 100, 200, or 500 euros," said Jansons.
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