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Atviras Europos saugumo ekspertų laiškas Europos Komisijos Prezidentui J.C. Juncker‘iui ir Europos Sąjungos vyriausiajai įgaliotinei užsienio reikalams ir saugumo politikai Federica’i Mogherini

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Rusija ne tik naudoja masinę dezinformacijos kampaniją prieš ES, bet net panaudojo cheminį ginklą, bandydama nunuodyti Sergejų ir Juliją Skripalius Didžiojoje Britanijoje. Kremliaus kišimasis į ES valstybių rinkimus bei politinį gyvenimą, siekiant skaldyti ES ir sėti nepasitikėjimą, yra milžiniškas, o dezinformacija neturi ribų. Tačiau ES struktūrų atsakas yra labai vangus, nors formaliai ir yra specialios struktūros šiam tikslui. 2015 m. Europos Vadovų Tarybos pavedimu Europos Komisija ir Europos išorės veiksmų tarnyba sukūrė padalinį, skirta kovai su šia propaganda – Strateginės komunikacijos Rytų kaimynystės šalyse darbo grupę (EEAS East Stratcom Task Force). Tačiau šios darbo grupės finansavimas yra labai mažas, todėl grupės veikla yra neefektyvi. Darbo grupei ES Parlamentas skiria vos 1,1 milijono eurų, o darbuotojų skaičius yra visiškai nepakankamas. Artėja Europos Parlamento rinkimai ir Kremlius be abejo bandys daryti jiems įtaką, pasitelkdamas dezinformaciją. Europos Komisija yra visiškai nepasiruošusi užkirsti tam kelią. Dėl to šiuo laišku Europos Komisija raginama: aiškiai įvardinti Rusiją kaip priešiška jėgą, kovojančia informacinį karą prieš ES, skirti strateginės komunikacijos padaliniui bent 5 milijonus eurų ir jam suteikti galimybes įdarbinti dar bent 30 papildomų ekspertų.

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Open Letter by European Security Experts to President of the European Commission J. C. Juncker and High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Federica Mogherini

Dear President of the European Commission,

Dear High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy,

On Sunday, March 4, a chemical weapons attack was conducted on European soil for the first time in over 70 years. Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. The attack was accompanied by a massive disinformation campaign by Russia. The EU was quick and determined in its response. It condemned the attack strongly and many of its member states expelled Russian diplomats.

We need similar determination showing the EU is ready to defend itself against Russia’s disruptive disinformation operations seeking to abuse our vulnerabilities. In the aftermath of the Salisbury attack, the European Council invited the High Representative and the Commission to present an action plan on disinformation.

This is your chance to finally send a strong signal to Russia: that the EU does not tolerate Russia exploiting its fundamental values and principles, such as freedom of expression, for malign information operations aimed at weakening the EU and its member states. Already in 2015, the European Council tasked the Commission and the EEAS to challenge Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign, and a communications team, the East Strategic Communications Task Force at the EEAS was set up as a first step.

As European specialists focusing on foreign and security policy, we are closely following the activities of the Commission on countering the threat of disinformation campaigns. Many of us have cooperated with the East Stratcom Task Force since it was established. We have seen first hand how the capacity of the only counter-disinformation team mandated by the EU heads of states and governments has been not been supported as it should have.

Last year, 65 security experts across Europe called for the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini to triple the capacity of the EEAS East STRATCOM Team and give it a budget in millions of Euros, so it could start fulfilling its mandate as stipulated by the Member States and the European Parliament.

This has not happened. The only budget given to the understaffed team is 1,1 million euros through the European Parliament and as a result, the team still has no permanent budget enabling strategic long-term planning. The EU response to Russia’s disinformation is based on just a couple of experts mainly paid by the member states, while the official investment by Russia alone in its propaganda channels is over one billion euros. The Commission is still clearly failing in delivering a practical response to pro-Kremlin disinformation, despite repeated calls from the Member States, the European Parliament, and numerous European security experts.

We are aware of other initiatives by the Commission. The trouble is that these initiatives either fail to see that Russia is by far the most aggressive foreign actor in the disinformation space, or they fail to design any meaningful response against this actor. This means that East StratCom is so far the EU’s only response against the Kremlin’s hostile information aggression.

The European Parliamentary elections are approaching. We have seen Russia’s orchestrated attempts to influence the French elections and Brexit. It has hacked the parliament ahead of German elections and manipulated information around the Catalonia independence vote to influence public opinion, just to mention a few. The very EU’s East StratCom provides publicly available evidence of Russian hostile activities. There is an ongoing disinformation campaign by Russia around the downing of MH17 and chemical attacks in Syria.

In April 2018, in Britain, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and France, the majority of people suspected Russia was behind the Salisbury poisoning. But in Bulgaria, for example, 81% did not see sufficient proof of Russian involvement. 54% considered that the Skripal case was a provocation against Russia. And in October, 28 percent of Russians believed the Skripals were in fact poisoned by British intelligence services. 3 percent said the attack was carried out by Russian intelligence services. Another 56 percent of respondents said, “it could have been anyone”.

The EU’s weak response to Russia’s disinformation is damaging to the European Union’s credibility internationally, and as a security provider to its citizens. It gives way to malign actors to freely interfere.

Therefore, we call upon you, as the President of the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, to show that this Commission will actually do something in this important field. As European security experts, we propose the three following steps:

1. As the Commission is about to present the Action Plan on disinformation, Russia must be explicitly identified as the main foreign source of hostile disinformation against the EU and its values. We have seen efforts inside the Commission to avoid pointing the finger at Russia, but as we have already seen in numerous cases, such an approach only encourages the Kremlin to be more aggressive. Russia must be officially named and shamed for its permanent hostilities against Europe.

2. The only European Council mandated body, the East Strategic Communications Task Force at the EEAS, should be provided with additional 30 experts with various language and specialist skills in order to be able to analyse pro-Kremlin disinformation with appropriate human resources, including during the upcoming European Parliament election campaign. It is a strategic political failure of President Juncker and High Representative Mogherini that since 2015, the Commission with thousands of employees was so far unable and unwilling to provide these resources to the only EU specialist team on this issue, despite numerous calls by various Heads of States and Governments in the EU Member States, by Member States’ Foreign Ministers, by the European Parliament, or by the European expert community.

3. The East Strategic Communications Task Force at the EEAS should be provided with an annual budget of at least 5 million EUR for special research, monitoring and campaigns. Without any real budget for its work, this team cannot have a relevant impact on the issue which the Member States and the European Parliament have repeatedly called for to be addressed. The adequate budget is needed for proper monitoring of disinformation oriented sources, both in the traditional media and in the social media, as well as other non-traditional sources. The Commission should also use its existing tools to enhance long-term financial and other support to independent local media working in/on Russia and the states of the Eastern Partnership.

Signatories

Harpaul Alberto, Centennial Group International, USA
Alex Alexiev, Chairman, Balkan and Black Sea Studies (cbbss.org) andBulgariaAnalytica.org, Bulgaria
Karl Altau, Joint Baltic American National Committee, Estonia
Laima Andrikiene, Member, European Parliament, Lithuania
Erkki Bahovski, Editor of Diplomaatia, International Centre for Defence and Security, Estonia
Kamil Basaj, CEO, Info Ops, Poland
Valdis Berzins, Foreign News Editor, Latvijas Avize Daily, Latvia
Petr Bohacek, Director, European Security Journal, Czech Republic
Michael Boltze, B&B Boltze GbR, Germany
Eto Buziashvili, Georgian Strategic Analysis Center, Georgia
Arnaud Castaignet, Head of Public Relations, e-Residency, Estonia
Halyna Coynash, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, Ukraine
Viola von Cramon, Former MP, German Bundestag (Alliance 90/The Greens), Germany
Slawomir Debski, Director, Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), Poland
Kestutis J. Eidukonis, President, VilNews.com, Lithuania
Yevhen Fedchenko, Chief Editor, StopFake, Ukraine
Iulian Fota, Former Presidential Adviser, National security, Romania
Rob Gill, Irish-Ukrainian Solidarity, Ireland
Gustav Gressel, Senior Fellow, ECFR, Germany
Shota Gvineria, Senior Fellow, EPRC, Georgia
Joel Harding, Independent Information Warfare Expert, USA
Pavel Havlíček, Fellow, Association for International Affairs, Czech Republic
Gunnar Hökmark, Member, European Parliament, Sweden
Boris Chykulay, Head of the Board, Forum of the Ukrainians in the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Gyarmati Istvan, ICDT Foundation, Hungary
Wojciech Jakóbik, Editor in Chief, BiznesAlert.pl, Poland
Bojan S. Janković, President, League West (Liga Zapad), Serbia
Peter Jukes, Dial M for Mueller, USA
Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Advisor, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euroatlantic Integration of Ukraine, Ukraine
Tunne Kelam, Member, European Parliament, Estonia
Maksym Khylko, East European Security Research Initiative Foundation, Ukraine
Bjarne Kim, Author, Denmark
Tamar Kintsurashvili, Media Development Foundation, Georgia
James Kirchick, Fellow, Brookings Institution, USA
David J. Kramer, Former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, USA
Marius Laurinavičius, Senior Fellow, Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis, Lithuania
Andrii Lavrenuk, Correspondent in France, Ukrainian National News Agency UKRINFORM, Ukraine
Jan Lipavský, Member, Parliament, Czech Republic
Ivan Lozowy, Movement to Fight Corruption, Ukraine
Radu Magdin, VP, Strategikon, Romania
Juraj Mesik, Analyst, Slovak Foreign Policy Association, Slovakia
Jelena Milič, Director, Centre for Euro-Atlantic Studies, Serbia
Giorgi Muchaidze, Executive Director, Atlantic Council of Georgia, Georgia
Andrej Novak, European Cosmopolitan Consulting, Germany
Vít Novotný, Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Belgium
Paata Gaprindashvili, Director, Georgia´s Reforms Associates (GRASS), Georgia
Dmytro Potekhin, FakesRadar.org, Ukraine
Kristi Raik, Director, Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, Estonia
Nima Rashedan, CivicCloud, Poland
Giedrius Sakalauskas, Director, Res Publica – civic resilience center, Lithuania
Sven Sakkov, Director, International Centre for Defence and Security, Estonia
Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, Member, European Parliament, Poland
Robert Seely, Member, Parliament for Isle of Wight, United Kingdom
Eugeniusz Smolar, Centre for International Relations, Poland
Vladimir Socor, Senior Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation, USA
Evgeni Starikov, KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany
Alice Stollmeyer, Defending Democracy, Belgium
Radu Tudor, Pol&Mil Analyst, Romania
Andreas Umland, Senior Fellow, Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Ukraine
Marcel H. Van Herpen, Director, The Cicero Foundation, The Netherlands
Ilian Vassilev, Former Ambassador, Bulgaria to Russia, Bulgaria