Influencers at the Gate: The Role of Influencers in Russian Info & Influence Ops

In this episode of Active Measures, we focus on Lithuania—a frontline nation in the global struggle against authoritarian threats. As a refuge for exiled Belarusian and Russian activists, Lithuania has emerged as a beacon of democratic resilience, courageously confronting Vladimir Putin’s aggressive campaign against freedom and democracy.Marcus Kolga travels to Vilnius for an exclusive conversation with Mantas Adomenas, former Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and current Secretary General of the Community of Democracies. A tireless advocate for democracy, Mantas has played a pivotal role in shaping Lithuania’s bold foreign policy, actively countering authoritarian influence from Russia and China, fiercely defending Ukraine, and championing democracy globally.His vocal support for Taiwan and unyielding criticism of authoritarian regimes has made him a direct target—resulting in a Kremlin ban in 2024. Today, as the leader of the Community of Democracies, Mantas Adomenas continues to unite nations committed to strengthening democratic institutions and confronting autocratic threats.Join us as we explore Lithuania’s inspiring fight for democracy and discuss strategies to protect freedom in an increasingly hostile world.

In this episode, we’ll explore how one of the world’s most vulnerable nations—Taiwan, which faces a daily barrage of Chinese state information and influence operations—has successfully built resilience against PRC  information warfare . We’ll delve into Taiwan’s comprehensive, whole-of-society approach to countering these threats.Joining me today is Ben Graham Jones, a specialist in emerging threats to election integrity. Ben advises leading organizations in the elections field and contributed to the report we’ll be discussing through his work with Doublethink Lab in Taipei. Over his career, he has led three election missions, participated in numerous election observation, assistance, and advisory missions, and designed cutting-edge tools for analyzing online information and election technologies.Ben’s extensive experience includes working with organizations like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Carter Center, and the European Union. He has also served as a policy adviser on Prime Ministerial initiatives in the United Kingdom. Ben’s a graduate of the University of Cambridge and King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, Ben is also a Fellow at the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.In his report, Taiwan POWER, which examines the 2024 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan, Ben presents Taiwan as a model for building resilience against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI).

In this episode, your host, Marcus Kolga, travels to Tallinn Estonia where he meets with leading global expert on Russian influence and information operations, Molly McKew, to talk about the role of domestic US and Canadian influencers in those operations, their impact on our society, and about those nations that have successfully challenged them, like Estonia.

In this episode, Marcus Kolga travels to the capital of Latvia, Riga, where he chats with former Latvian Defence Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Artis Pabriks, the founder and chairman of the Northern Defence Policy Center Think Tank. Dr. Pabriks highlights Latvia's early recognition of Russian hybrid and information warfare, emphasizing the need for countermeasures.

Episode 5 turns to Russia's information operations targeting Sweden. In this episode, our host, Marcus Kolga, travels to Estonia’s capital, Tallin, where he speaks with Swedish journalist and foreign policy expert Patrik Oksanen. The impact of Patrik's work has made him a significant target of Russian transnational oppression, which we will cover in an upcoming podcast episode. Together, Marcus and Patrik unpack Russian information operations in Sweden, including the Kremlin's amplification of a series of strange Quran burning incidents in 2023 and how they may have stifled Sweden's efforts to join NATO. 

In this episode, our host Marcus Kolga, travels to Helsinki, Finland, where he meets with Jakub Kalensky, a senior analyst at the European Center of Excellence for countering hybrid threats in Helsinki, who is active in the development of the EU's external action services, EU versus Disinfo at the eastern STRATCOM and now with the Hybrid COE - an international, autonomous network-based organization promoting a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to countering hybrid threats. Marcus talks to Jakub about the modern phase of Russia's disinformation operations and their intensification after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH 17 by a surface to air missile belonging to the Russian Armed Forces.

Welcome to the third episode of Disinfo Watch and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute's Active Measures podcast. Over the past two episodes, we've looked at the history of Moscow's information and influence operations.In this episode, our host Marcus Kolga travelled to Helsinki, Finland, where he met with former Canadian Brigadier General Jay Janzen, who is currently the director of the Communications Division at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) located in Mons Belgium. Earlier in his career, Jay was deployed to Bosnia and twice to Afghanistan, where he was involved in communications operations. Jay was Director of Public Affairs for the Canadian Army, the chief of media operations at SHAPE and the Director General STRATCOM for the Canadian Armed Forces. Marcus and Jay sat down in an outdoor café next to Helsinki's Eastern harbour to chat about the threats that NATO and its members face in the information and cognitive domain, and how NATO and SHAPE are preparing to defend our collective cognitive sovereignty and fighting back against our enemies.

In this episode, we'll look at how our allies on NATO's eastern flank have been the targets and victims of Russian operations for nearly a century. Marcus Kolga travels to Tallin in Estonia to meet with Estonian Member of Parliament, Eerik-Niiles Kross, to talk about how his country has endured, how it continues to be targeted, and what we might learn from the Estonians. Eerik was the chief of Estonia's intelligence services, and in 2008 he helped direct Georgia's counter propaganda operations. During the Russian invasion in 2018 Politico named him to their list of most influential Europeans, calling him the Baltic James Bond. Marcus starts by asking Eerik about Russia's decision to add him, Estonia's Prime Minister, and other ministers to its entry ban list. The Kremlin justified this by falsely accusing them of persecuting Estonia's Russian-speaking population, rewriting history, and promoting what it calls Russophobia—a historically familiar accusation recycled by the Kremlin against its challengers.

In this episode, we’ll look at Russia’s historic information and influence operations in the western world and specifically Canada, with renowned historian Professor Amy W. Knight who is described by the New York Times as the world’s foremost scholar on the KGB. We’re going to step back to 1945 when a soviet military intelligence cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko stationed at the soviet embassy in Ottawa, left the embassy one night with a suitcase full of top secret files , those files contained detailed information about the Canadian and other western agents and assets who were helping the soviets advance their interests in the democratic world . The files Gouzenko handed over to Canadian authorities uncovered soviet assets inside government and academia and led to the conviction of 11 Canadians involved in soviet spying and influence operations. And it brought global attention to the threat of soviet influence operations in the western world. In 2005 Amy Knight published a book about Gouzenko and his defection entitled “How the Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet spies” . In this episode, your host – Marcus Kolga - speaks with Professor Knight from her home in New Jersey.