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through Russian television stations. On a daily basis, they are exposed to propagandistic programs in which the EU is demonized, NATO is treated as an aggressor, the democracies on Russia’s borders are presented as enemies, and the annexation of Crimea is hailed as a milestone in the rebuilding of a great Russian state.⁸

By exploiting the tensions that already exist between Estonia’s ethnic communities, the Kremlin has sought to turn a complex problem into something combustible. The tendency of Russian speakers and ethnic Estonians to live in parallel universes is exacerbated by Russian propaganda, which depicts the Estonian political leadership as hostile to Russians and as members of a cosmopolitan European elite that promotes sexual degeneracy and cultural radicalism. Moscow also tries to create distrust of the Baltic states among their NATO allies by depicting them as overly emotional, irresponsible, and intent on dragging other countries into a conflict with Russia.

There is no strong evidence that Russian speakers in Estonia are simply embracing the Russian explanation of things. Instead, they tend to reject both Russian and Estonian sources of information. This is in itself a victory of sorts for Russia, since the goal of external Russian propaganda is less to win people over to its way of thinking than to sow confusion and mistrust. Moscow’s interests are served so long as Estonian society remains divided. As a report on the integration of Russian speakers in Estonia concluded, “They [ethnic Estonians and Russian speakers] reside in separate information spaces and hold divergent perceptions and perspectives not just about each other, but also about the Estonian state and its history, its threat environment, and its national security policies. Since these two Estonias do not fully trust one another, when security developments put pressure on the country they tend to drift to opposing poles—especially if the factor of Russia is involved.”⁹

A wolf in sheep’s clothing
In their campaign to assert control over countries on Russia’s periphery, Kremlin officials have not hesitated to use traditional authoritarian methods, up to and including military invasion and the creation or support of proxy insurgents. But they have taken care to defend their efforts in terms meant to appeal to, or at least confuse, democratic audiences.

This is especially the case with propaganda broadcasts. While the Russian government has sought to prevent foreign news services like Radio Free Europe/Radio

Liberty from reaching the Russian people, it expects its own broadcasts to remain unhindered in neighboring democracies, which are committed to freedom of expression. Thus when Latvian authorities imposed a six-month ban on the Russian television channel Rossiya RTR for inciting ethnic hatred in April 2016, Russian officials called on international watchdog bodies to investigate the incident as a violation of media freedom.¹⁰

Something similar is at work in the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector. Moscow has established or supported a series of charities, think tanks, and associations that promote Russian interests, claim to represent Russian minorities, and in some cases advance secessionist causes in the near abroad.¹¹ The Russian government presumes that these organizations will be allowed to operate without restriction in democracies. Meanwhile, it compelled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to close down its Russia operations in 2012, and has banned contact between Russian NGOs and foreign organizations that have been placed on its “undesirable” list.

Russia has also used the extensive distribution of passports to draw populations involved in frozen conflicts—or potentially involved in future conflicts—into its orbit, and to justify its meddling in neighboring states. Rather than conquering a foreign people, the Russian authorities convert foreign individuals into Russian citizens, then claim a right to defend them from what had been their own government. Up to 90 percent of those living in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia have Russian passports, which are accessible to anyone who still has Soviet documents or at least one ancestor who was a permanent resident of Russia, among other forms of eligibility.

Limited sovereignty, limited options
For Russia’s neighbors, the constant intimidation and interference from Moscow have significant consequences. Most importantly, normal political development becomes difficult, and sometimes impossible. The affected countries lack full sovereignty in the sense that they are not free to make fundamental decisions about their political systems, their trading partners, and whether to integrate into Euro-Atlantic institutions. Their national identity and existence as states are regularly cast into doubt. Democratic reform often takes a back seat to security concerns, or to policy concessions aimed at maintaining good relations with Russia.

Prior to the saber rattling from the Kremlin, Estonia had an economy with one of Europe’s higher rates of

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