It's a great question. With regard to engagement, the young generation in particular are very vulnerable. In the 21st century, the speed of information is immense. It's hard to define what is real and what is not real. It's very easy to manipulate people's minds and hearts.
When we talk about the younger generation, yes, in Latvia we started to undergo the educational reform that today is the largest reform of the education system. It not only affects optimizing the school network and so on, but it also touches on the content of education. We had an education system that was based on the leftovers of the Soviet Union and that kind of thinking, that you don't develop individual capabilities and so on, that you just learn by heart, sentence by sentence, and it doesn't develop personality.
Therefore, we are undergoing serious reforms in our educational content. One of them is media literacy. It's not connected to one course. It's linked with different subjects.
Starting in 2021, we will be implementing defence studies in schools, if I'm not mistaken, and maybe the ambassador can correct me. We will have lessons once a week for high school children that will end in the summer in a 10-day camp. Those who want to pursue a military career will already have a sense of what it is. It also involves developing critical thinking and so on. We understand we have to clearly invest a lot in that.
It's not only about the education system; it's about the professionals in journalism as well. Therefore, we have set up the centre of media excellence where we teach young journalists, not only from Latvia, but from the Eastern Partnership countries as well. We know that the Eastern Partnership countries are very much affected by disinformation on a scale that is altogether different from the western countries.
It's a complex thing that we are already addressing in practice. That said, in Latvia and in the Baltics...again I know in the west everybody talked about Russian propaganda after Crimea and after Maidan, and they called it propaganda.
Propaganda by definition is winning the hearts and minds. Whereas the Kremlin's approach is information warfare, because Putin's aim is not to win hearts and minds. He couldn't care less. His aim is to spread fear, people's distrust in their democratically elected institutions, in their statehood, in that kind of an approach.
Therefore whenever we speak about Russia's disinformation, we should call it what it is. It's information warfare, and it's conducted on a scale that maybe in the western countries we saw only for five years. In the Baltics, we've experienced it on a daily basis since we gained our independence. We have grown thicker skin in that regard, society's resilience to that, but of course there are people who are persuaded or affected much more easily. We have to address these vulnerable groups within a society, and one of them is youth.
Of course, it's connected to the countermeasures. We are limited in our activities. I know that Putin is using our values against us. He knows that we cherish freedom of speech, freedom of thought, that they are the core values of our democracy. He's just waiting for a moment when some country from the west will, let's say, limit TV channels, limit some articles and so on.
That will be viewed as censorship. They will say, “Look, you're going against us in conducting these activities. Look at yourself in the mirror.”
We have to have very smart policies and strategies in place. Even for us, it's a very complicated situation within the European Union. Again, we have regulations and directives. One of them is an audiovisual directive, which prohibits the banning of TV channels registered within the EU. A lot of Russian propaganda channels—I don't call them media, because we don't have to legitimize propaganda as media—like RT and Sputnik News, are registered in the U.K. For the time being, the U.K. is still a member state.
In Latvia, we see a lot of TV channels that are transmitted only in the Baltic States. There is hate speech, and an invitation to violence. In accordance with criminal law, we can actually enforce and limit, but we cannot limit these TV channels, because they are registered in other EU member states. That issue is very complex.
Again, that's a vulnerability. Yes, we have very good legal frameworks operationalized, and the four freedoms within the Europan Union. When we try to impose some limitations, Putin will use it against us. “You set up your own law and rules that you yourself are violating.”