The ghosts of soviet past stalk the streets
of Estonia again.
NATO troops line borders against emboldened
Russia.
And in these part, the information battle
lines have already been crossed.
The old Viru hotel. Once KGB controlled.
A soviet symbol that screams: Information
is power.
The rooms and restaurants bugged to blackmail
heady days and nights.
Recorded to Compromise.
We're going to the hotels 23rd floor. That's
right 
the 23rd floor.
The KGB control room.
The switchboard for a network of tiny microphones.
These old wires, the medium of Russian influence.
Nowadays the wires are fibre optic.
Another hotel in Tallinn.
We meet a member of the group Propastop. The
new breed of information activist.
He's asked for anonymity to avoid being targeted
by Russian hackers.
Our story starts with a Facebook post he wants
to show us.
It will end, he says, with the Kremlin.
The FaceBook post tells the tale of a group
of British troops with the NATO mission to
Estonia.
According to the post, the soldiers were rude
to an elderly lady in a hospital waiting room
in Tallinn.
She didn’t have a seat, they wouldn’t
give her theres.
At which point our plucky story-teller confronts
the troops and ends up with the following
flurry - in English.
I'm an agent of Putin, she says, and we are
everywhere.
The strange little tale was shared a few times
with friends and then disappeared into the
ether.
Not so much.
It was in fact picked up by the Baltic States
news portal BaltNews. It went viral.
With 100s of British troops en route to the
Baltic states, the subtext of the story, NATO
troops are not only coming to bullying mother
Russia with tanks on the border.
They are also bullying your Granny.
The problem.with the BaltNews story:
The MOD told us that when the article was
published, there were about five British military
personnel in Tallinn, including a general
and a handful of officials.
Also the original facebook source has deleted
the post, has not responded to our request
for more detail and is quoted in other similar
type stories on the BaltNews.
This is one example. There are others. Even
some real news. On Balt News.
It Popped up 2 years ago. It's Estonian office
is here in an industrial estate in Tallinn.
So this is the office block where the registered
offices of Balt News/ Balt Media are - and
it’s 205, is the number where it’s registered,
which is down here.
A sister company called Alt Media is also
registered here.
Hello, how are you doing? Is this Balt News?
Is Mr Kornilov in there?
Do you produce Russian propaganda here?
And have the police been here? Is that what
this tape is?
The police were here for the boss. Alexander
Kornilov.
"Hello, is that Mr Kornilov....."
We've temporarily commandeered the old KGB
control room to track him down.
The man who runs Balt News and Alt media was
arrested last year by police on suspicion
of tax fraud.
It's alleged that he didn't pay the requisite
taxes on money his organisation received from
Moscow.
Its one of the ways the Estonian equivalent
to MI5 is clamping down on what they call
Subversive Russian Influences.
The Intelligence Services here are in no doubt
about the endgame/
The goal is to make Russia great again or
make it a superpower again.
We started with BaltNews and Alexander Kornilov.
He’s a pro-Kremlin activist, I wouldn’t
call him a journalist.
-Does he call himself a journalist?
Sure.
-Is he?
They call themselves journalists, yeah. They
are coordinated from Russia and -
-How do you know they’re coordinated from
Russia?
This is - I cannot go into details on that.
But we know.
-Is it money?
Yeah, they get money. Yeah.
-From Moscow?
Yes.
Kornilov wouldn't do an interview on camera.
But told us he's standing by his journalism
- and said the tax case against him was politically
motivated.
There is another layer to our story.
For that we travel south to Riga, Latvia.
This is the NATO agency that monitors fake
news.
Yes, such a thing exists and the UK is a contributing
partner.
We started with mechanics. Now for the big
picture.
A new trend, according to NATO, for Russian
money to buy existing clickbait sites, and
bit by bit transform them.
That, sort of clickbait business, they introduce
the sentiments, the news.
-So are you saying to me, Janis, that pro-Russian
businessmen are buying up entertainment websites
and changing them into Russian propaganda
organisation?
They’ve exposed themselves, being part of
the pro-Russian political forces.
A second trend. For Russian funded think tanks
in the West to basically launder fake news.
To give it a veneer of academic credibility.
A thin sheet of solid ice on top of the slush.
So, it's sophisticated and, according to NATO,
designed to drive a wedge - first between
the ethnically Russian community and the Baltic
states they live in. But, ultimately, to do
the same to organisations like the EU.
You don’t need tanks. You might actually
achieve your goals if you change the perception
of a given society in a way that corresponds
to your interests and the society starts to
act how you want them to act.
This is the NATO perspective of course - and
it's worth remembering that Propaganda changes
to News and vice versa depending on your world
view.
Fake News nothing new in the Baltic States.
There's history here.
Take the barricades in Riga in ‘91.
The threat of Soviet aggression prompted thousands
to surround government buildings and the radio
and television stations. 7 people were killed.
People who wanted to protect the independence
of the narrative.
In other words, they formed a human shield
around, believe it or not, the mainstream
media. For these people, fake news wasn’t
something you liked or disliked on Facebook.
It was something worth laying your life on
the line for to stop.
