I'm one of the few Latvians who doesn't speak Russian, but most Latvians understand and speak Russian, and they can also watch Russian television. In a way, they're used to this; they've seen anti-Latvian propaganda in the Russian media for the last 26 years. In a sense, then, they're more sophisticated about this and know how to counter it.
I think the area in which we have to work is in doing a better job of communicating to the Russian-speaking population. It's the older generation. The younger generation of Russians speak English, and they speak French. They're more cosmopolitan. It's the former Soviets, the older folks who chose not to become citizens, who just speak Russian. They read and hear this propaganda and believe it, except that they're not in a position to act on it.
We also have to work with the political parties. Even our left-wing party, Harmony Centre, is aware of it. They acknowledge it, and we have to work with them to get this information out.
Our problem with the media is not so much that there's always Russian propaganda in the Latvian media. It's the fact that many of the media are owned by wealthy people who have political interests. That, however, is local politics. They may support one party over another. We have an ongoing struggle with transparency in media ownership.
Interestingly enough, now social media is overshadowing it more and more, even in Latvia, whether it's through Facebook or Twitter, or we have our own form of Facebook in Latvian. Many people are dealing with it, but it is here that we have to counter it, because you can deal with the traditional media and expose lies and misinformation, but it's a lot tougher with the stuff that goes viral. So far we haven't had a problem. I think in that sense people in Latvia have a pretty good idea of what is Russian propaganda and accept that.
Just on a European level, one thing I'm very pleased about is that, apart from the NATO centre of excellence, StratCom, we had the presidency of the EU in 2015, and one thing we introduced—and Federica Mogherini, the high representative for foreign policy there, accepted it—was that they establish a centre for strategic communications. It's the East StratCom Task Force. They're starting to work on this, and it's providing more and more information through Facebook about false news, about disinformation. They're doing it on that level.