Wagner PMC supports Estonian Eurosceptics

This was reported by Politico.

The Politico article cites internal documents about the activities of the Prigozhin’s Wagner PMC. According to documents, the group tried to carry out influence operations in Estonia in an attempt to stir Euroscepticism and distrust toward NATO – they planned to support EKRE in the 2019 European Parliament elections.

They planned to promote anti-Western narratives such as "problems in Estonia because of the EU", as well as to discredit the then president Kirsti Kaljulaid and ex-leader of the Liberal Reform Party Kaja Kallas, who is now the prime minister.

Politico notes that they cannot confirm the implementation of this operation, since the names of the Facebook groups indicated in the documents were never created. At the same time, experts discovered other groups designed to destabilize the situation in Estonia, as well as the spread of the #ESTexitEU hashtag on Twitter.

Although it’s hard to measure the impact of the operation, experts said the efforts were small-scale and quickly disproven. Politico adds that EKRE declined to comment on the campaign.

Instead, the police issued a separate statement calling the article a fake and an example of an "information operation to influence the election results" and said it had never asked for or received money from businessmen, and had never communicated with potential foreign sponsors.

"At no time in 2019, when EKRE was in government, did the Internal Security Service or Foreign Intelligence Service alert us that someone wanted to contact the party or was trying to get close to it," the party said in a statement.

"We consider it unfortunate that Estonian publications, by transmitting unverified information, participate in Kremlin’s information operations themselves. The Kremlin has been interested in discrediting the Estonian forces for many years. And the spread of this fake news is also useful for the Kremlin because it undermines the ability of national forces to get into the Riigikogu," EKRE said.

• Estonia has revoked the residence permit of pro-Russian provocateur Sergey Chaulin – on February 14 he was deported to Russia.