Imagine waking up in Tallinn on a grey autumn morning, making coffee, scrolling through the news, and discovering that Moscow’s most influential state media outlets are telling millions of people that your small country is secretly helping Ukraine launch drone attacks against Russia. For a resident of Estonia, this is not a dystopian novel. It is a recurring reality. According to a detailed analytical report by Propastop, Estonia’s strategic communications platform, and reported by The Record, a large-scale and aggressive disinformation campaign has emerged across leading Russian state media outlets and influential pro-war Telegram channels. The campaign directly targets Estonia and the other sovereign Baltic states, treating them as a single hostile bloc of two-faced neighbours who have invited NATO to their land. The allegation is specific and serious: Ukrainian drone attacks on strategic facilities in St Petersburg and the Leningrad region are supposedly being launched from Baltic territory. The story is repeated with such confidence and volume that it begins to feel like a truth to those who hear it. There is no evidence—no official report, no satellite image, no intercepted communication, no ground-based launcher found, no drone debris traced to the Baltics. Yet propaganda does not require evidence. It requires repetition, because a familiar lie is more dangerous than a new one. The choice of St Petersburg is not accidental. As Russia’s second city and a source of deep national pride, it is an emotionally loaded battleground in the information war. By connecting strikes near St Petersburg with small NATO members on Russia’s western border, the narrative creates a direct bridge between the war in Ukraine and the everyday security of the Baltic region. It implies that the Baltic states are not bystanders but protagonists, and that Russia’s own failures are somehow their fault. For ordinary Estonians, who have heard such accusations before from a neighbour that once occupied their country, the message is chilling. It is not an invitation to dialogue. It is a preparation for conflict.
This is not the first time the Kremlin has tried this narrative. In the spring, similar stories circulated, attempting to link the Baltic countries to drone operations inside Russia. But the autumn campaign is different, and the difference should worry everyone who cares about European security. The rhetoric has shifted dramatically from accusation to threat. Senior Russian analysts, experts, and even officials are no longer merely insinuating Baltic involvement. They are openly discussing harsh “retaliatory measures.” Some are calling for a complete blockade of Estonia. Others are talking about suspending all civilian and military air traffic to and from the country. Let that sink in: a neighbouring nuclear power is publicly debating how to punish a NATO member state for a crime that never happened. In Moscow’s media ecosystem, these statements are presented not as extremist fantasies but as legitimate strategic options. They are analysed, quoted, and refined by talk-show hosts and retired officers, which gives them an appearance of mainstream seriousness. In Estonia, they land with a different weight. They sound like a prelude. For a country that has already lived through war and occupation, the word “blockade” is not abstract. It means closed borders, stranded families, disrupted trade, and a return to the darkness of the past. The cruelty of such threats is precisely the point. The aim is not only to pressure Ukrainian allies and undermine Baltic confidence, but also to test how far the West will tolerate escalation. Each time the Kremlin voices an outrageous threat and faces no serious consequence, the threshold for what is considered acceptable moves a little further. That is why this autumn’s campaign matters: it is not just propaganda, it is a probe—a way to measure the resolve of NATO and to discover where the red lines actually lie.
Amid these threats, propagandists have added a second layer of invention. The official narrative now includes the British Special Air Service, or SAS, and NATO military infrastructure. Readers are told that elite Western commandos are helping Ukrainian forces plan and coordinate drone strikes, and that NATO’s eastern bases are being used as launch pads for attacks on Russia. These claims are carefully chosen to trigger two powerful emotions at once: betrayal and fear. They are meant to suggest that NATO is not just supporting Ukraine but actively dragging Russia into an existential war. The implication is that the Baltic states have turned themselves into forward operating bases for a Western conspiracy, and that Russia has no choice but to respond with force. Propastop’s analysts, however, are unambiguous: none of these sensational publications or supposedly expert commentaries is supported by a single verifiable fact. Not one. The stories are constructed using the familiar toolkit of disinformation: unnamed sources, fake analysts, circular quoting between state media and Telegram channels, and enough detail to sound plausible. They are repeated so often that they become part of a self-consistent information ecosystem. But there is no underlying truth. The report calls this a classic example of the deliberate fabrication of a provocative media narrative. The goal is not to inform, but to inflame. Yet the deeper danger is that a lie repeated often enough becomes a justification. When people believe an invasion is imminent, they may welcome measures that would otherwise seem outrageous. This is how consent for aggression is manufactured—not in a single dramatic announcement, but through the slow drip of half-true stories, false experts, and manufactured rage.
Why does Moscow keep reaching for this pattern? According to the report, the goals are geopolitical, and the first is distraction. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has brought casualties, economic pain, international isolation, and a series of military setbacks that the Kremlin cannot easily hide. But propaganda offers a way out. By shifting the conversation to an imaginary “direct threat” from NATO, the regime can convince its domestic audience that Russia is not the aggressor but the victim. The enemy, according to this story, is at the gates. The Baltic states are not small, vulnerable democracies fighting for their right to exist; they are staging grounds for attacks on St Petersburg. NATO is not a defensive alliance; it is a conspiracy to dismember Russia. This narrative conveniently explains why the war is going badly. Russia is not failing; it is being attacked by a much larger coalition. For ordinary Russians, who may already be exhausted by sanctions, rising prices, and the fear of mobilization, this story provides a protective shield against the terrible truth of imperial defeat. It also gives them someone to hate. Anger is always easier to manage than sorrow. If Russians believe that Estonia is launching drones at the heart of Russia, they are less likely to ask difficult questions about their own leaders, about the dead soldiers, about the failed offensive, about the decades of corruption and lies. The Kremlin understands this deeply. It does not need to win an argument. It only needs to seize attention and shape emotions. In that sense, the disinformation campaign is a domestic political tool as much as an international threat. It is a pressure valve for the system’s own contradictions.
The second goal is longer-term and more sinister: to create a lasting perception inside Russian society that future aggression against the Baltic states would be entirely justified. This is not about the next news cycle. It is about building a moral and political foundation for actions that have not yet occurred, but are already being prepared in the information space. The strategy is deliberate. If you repeat for months that Estonia is launching drones at St Petersburg, that British special forces are operating from Baltic bases, and that NATO is preparing an attack on Russia, then eventually a large part of the population will believe that any Russian response—including a blockade, a military incursion, or a so-called peacekeeping intervention—is a legitimate act of self-defence. This is how information environments are prepared for real-world provocations. The same pattern was used before 2014, when Russia prepared the ground for the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in Donbas, and again before the full-scale invasion in 2022, when false accusations of NATO aggression and “genocide” were used to justify the largest land war in Europe since 1945. Now the Baltic states are being cast as the next target in that narrative. For Estonians, who carry the memory of Soviet occupation and who have watched this playbook unfold in Ukraine, the warnings are not abstract or exaggerated. They are a lived experience. The goal is to make the unthinkable seem ordinary, so that when the next provocation comes, neither Russian society nor the international community will be taken by surprise. At that point, the lie has already done its work.
For Estonia’s security services, this campaign is therefore not just propaganda noise. They regard the systematic fabrication of false accusations as a direct and dangerous attempt to prepare the information environment for possible provocations along NATO’s eastern borders. The word “provocation” is key. A fabricated story can be used to justify a real incident, or to create a pretext for hybrid attacks—cyberattacks, border crises, disinformation planted around ethnic tensions, or even a clash staged by armed forces in unmarked uniforms—that fall below the threshold of formal war. What starts as a lie can become a reason for military escalation. That is why the Estonian state has called for the utmost vigilance, and not only from its own citizens. Allies, too, must understand what is happening across the region. The spread of disinformation moves faster than ever, but so does the ability to counter it with facts, transparency, and a shared commitment to democratic values. The report from Propastop is a reminder that the battle for truth is not an abstract academic exercise; it is a front line. On that front line, the first defence is a clear-eyed refusal to be frightened into silence. It is a determination to call lies by their name, to support the institutions that expose them, and to stand together with allies who share the same threat. The Kremlin may be expert at manufacturing falsehoods, but it has no real answer for people who remember the past, embrace the truth, and refuse to be divided. That is the quiet strength of the Baltic states. And in the long run, it is stronger than any campaign of fear.