A fake press release saying the United States will remove nuclear weapons from Turkey and house them in Lithuania appears to be a Russian operation to divide NATO, western officials and analysts said.
“It’s messing principally with the U.S. and with Turkey, and there’s obviously one candidate for that particular role,” the Atlantic Council’s John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told the Washington Examiner.
The operation unfolded last week, just days before U.S. forces arrived in the Baltic nation as part of a NATO deployment. The fake press release, which appeared to come from the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and was sent to Lithuanian military units, asserted that the troops were on a mission “to transfer tactical nuclear weapons stored at Incirlik Air Base” in Turkey.
“This is likely a complex cyber-information attack,” Rasa Jakilaitienė, spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius, told the Washington Examiner. “Competent authorities are currently investigating the incident. The attack used spoofed addresses in their mails. As mails were spoofed we don’t do affiliation.”
Lithuania issued a public clarification, along with an image of the fake document. “Urgent information,” the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry tweeted Friday. “On 18 October, the Communication and Cultural Diplomacy Department of Lithuania MFA DID NOT issue a press release about an intention to establish the U.S. military base in Lithuania. This is a cyberattack – now under investigation by Lithuanian authorities.”
The chief target of the disinformation campaign likely is not Lithuania. “This is in the interests of those who want to see NATO divided and weak,” a European diplomat told the Washington Examiner. “If you keep this lie spreading and in the media space, that shows that America does not trust one of the NATO allies, Turkey.”
The operation shows the rapid reflexes of cyber-agents launching disinformation campaigns against western alliances. The fake press release was issued shortly after a U.S. official made the rare acknowledgement that the Air Force keeps nuclear weapons in Turkey, and shortly before NATO forces arrived in Lithuania.
“They push all this stuff out there hoping something’s going to move the dial a little bit in their direction,” Herbst said. “In Soviet times, these things which were called active measures then were not as voluminous as today and more tightly controlled. Now they have a lot of different types of people working on it, and some competition, and so you have all sorts of variations.”
The fake release won’t worsen the already-strained U.S. relationship with Turkey, which launched an invasion of northern Syria earlier this month, the analysts said.
“I think it’s unlikely that this would get traction with senior Turkish officials,” Herbst said. “But with your average Turk who may not be well disposed towards the United States, it might have an impact.”
The European diplomat suggested that the significance of the fake press release was minimized by Lithuania’s quick clarification that the bulletin wasn’t real.
“But, still, it shows that information space and information war has become a very important battle field,” the diplomat said.
