Just before and during recent election seasons in Estonia and Latvia, a quiet but relentless information war was already being waged on the citizens of these two small Baltic nations. According to a new report from the London-based threat intelligence firm Refute, Kremlin-linked actors have been orchestrating elaborate disinformation campaigns designed not necessarily to change the outcome of a vote, but to sow confusion, deepen public distrust, and weaken faith in democratic institutions. The report, published on Tuesday, documents how false narratives were built around real fears—Russia’s war in Ukraine, the role of NATO, the threat of drones crossing borders, and the vulnerability of the region—and then twisted to make people feel uncertain about what was true and whom they could trust. In the run-up to Estonia’s presidential election in September and Latvia’s parliamentary vote in October, these campaigns exploited genuine concerns and blended fabricated claims with real events, making them uniquely difficult to detect and dismiss. Refute’s co-founder and CEO, Tom Garnett, put it plainly: Russia is using disinformation as a deliberate instrument, designed to disorient citizens, shape public debate, and deepen divisions ahead of elections. It is not random noise, but a calculated strategy aimed at the psychological and social fabric of democratic societies.
What makes these campaigns especially unsettling is how sophisticated and adaptive they have become. This is not a matter of a few clumsy fake posts being copied and shared. According to the Refute report, false narratives were repeatedly rebuilt and adjusted for different audiences and platforms, a clear sign of deliberate, well-resourced operations. One striking example involved a single video that appeared in at least eight different versions, with edits tailored to Arabic-speaking and Spanish-speaking audiences, and some versions incorporating AI-generated footage. This kind of localization means the same core lie could travel across borders and cultures, speaking to different communities in their own language and with their own visual cues. The campaigns also relied on anchoring falsehoods to real events, which gave them an air of credibility. For instance, claims about drones and airspace violations were tied to genuine incidents involving drones in Baltic airspace, but the context was deliberately misleading. To make these narratives even more durable, the misinformation was often republished on websites in multiple languages, creating lasting references that could be cited and shared again later. Even after social media posts were flagged or removed, the websites remained, allowing the stories to circulate in more permanent forms and be recirculated by influencers and pro-Russian ecosystems as if they were established facts.
The report highlights a particularly alarming case in Latvia, where a fabricated video styled as a Euronews report claimed that a Ukrainian soldier had killed three NATO servicemen during the Baltic Trust 26 military exercise, and then taken his own life. The false story circulated between August 14 and September 6, with dozens of accounts reaching a combined audience of more than 1.85 million people. The timing was carefully chosen to coincide with a real military exercise, creating the impression that the exercise had been halted over the alleged deaths. In reality, the exercise ended as scheduled, and Latvia’s National Armed Forces quickly denounced the video as part of a coordinated disinformation campaign. But the denial did not stop the story from spreading. It was translated into multiple languages, repackaged by online influencers, and then discussed in pro-Russian information spaces as though the fabricated incident had actually happened. Euronews, the legitimate outlet whose name and branding were borrowed, confirmed that it had neither produced nor published the footage. For ordinary Latvian voters, this was more than just another false headline; it was a calculated attempt to manipulate their emotions about the war next door, to cast doubt on NATO’s presence, and to make them question whether even trusted international media could be believed.
In Estonia, the tactics were similarly bold and deceptive. One fake news site, styled as euobserver.news, was designed to resemble the legitimate Brussels-based outlet EUobserver, going so far as to copy genuine articles and journalists’ biographies. The site published a fabricated story linking Estonia’s outgoing President Alar Karis and Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nausėda to Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking network. This absurd story was then promoted through an AI-narrated video and more than a dozen social media accounts with a combined following of around 780,000 people. Another fake website, this one imitating the US defence publication The Defense Post, claimed that a Ukrainian drone had entered Estonian airspace and damaged two Portuguese F-16s near Ämari Air Base, at a reported cost of approximately €120 million. The claim constructed on real instances of drones crossing into Baltic airspace—some of which had been diverted by Russian electronic warfare—but falsely suggested that Ukrainian activity had caused significant damage on Estonian soil. The goal, according to the Refute report, was to erode trust in Ukraine, to question Estonian and broader European support for Kyiv, and to cast doubt on Estonia’s ability to defend its own skies. The story circulated in at least seven languages, and it deliberately tapped into an ongoing domestic debate about Estonia’s air defenses and its support for Ukraine, making the fake narrative feel timely and relevant to local audiences.
These campaigns were not limited to the Baltics. The Refute report emphasizes that the false narratives were also spread across global audiences, seeking to undermine perceptions of Baltic security abroad. By reaching international audiences, the Kremlin-linked actors hoped to weaken Western confidence in the Baltic states as reliable NATO partners and to suggest that the region was unstable, vulnerable, or somehow complicit in dangerous behavior. At the same time, the campaigns reflect a broader shift in how Russia operates in the information space. As Refute’s co-founder and CTO, Vlad Galu, explains, the tactics uncovered in this report represent a step change in how Russia is systemically targeting the information ecosystems of the Baltics and beyond. It is not enough to understand these actions as isolated hoaxes or harmless online tricks. They are part of a sustained and evolving strategy to blur the line between fact and fiction, to exhaust audiences with contradictory narratives, and to make people distrust everything they see, including genuine reporting, official statements, and democratic processes themselves. For the Baltic states—NATO and EU members with small populations, long borders with Russia, and a strong commitment to supporting Ukraine—the exposure to such operations is especially acute. They are on the front lines of a war that is being fought not only with missiles and drones, but also with images, videos, and stories designed to break the human spirit and confuse the public mind.
For citizens, the effect of these campaigns is deeply corrosive. Imagine scrolling through your news feed just before an election and encountering a video claiming that a Ukrainian soldier killed NATO troops, or an article suggesting your own president is linked to a convicted sex trafficker. Even if you later learn the stories are false, the emotional memory of the accusation lingers. That is precisely the point. These operations are not meant to convince everyone of a single lie; they are meant to create a fog of suspicion, a general feeling that nothing can be trusted, and a weary acceptance that the truth is unknowable. In that atmosphere, democratic debate becomes harder, voter confidence drops, and the ties that hold communities together begin to fray. The Refute report is a reminder that disinformation is not a side effect of the digital age but a weapon of war, used intentionally to destabilize societies from within. The best defense, the report suggests, lies in awareness, resilience, and a willingness to pause before sharing shocking claims. For voters in Latvia and Estonia, and indeed for citizens everywhere, the challenge is to remain clear-eyed in the face of deliberate confusion—to remember that the goal of such campaigns is not to inform, but to divide. The more people understand how these operations work, the less power they have. In the end, the most important countermeasure is not just better technology or stricter platform rules, though both matter, but a public that refuses to be manipulated and a democracy that refuses to be shaken by lies.