DISINFO: Baltic countries interpret their status in the USSR as an occupation, ignoring that their Parliaments chose it
SUMMARY
80 years ago the parliaments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania proclaimed the creation of their respective Soviet Socialist Republics. Today, those countries interpret their status inside the USSR as an occupation, but for many people, at that time the Union was real salvation from the Nazis. Experts in the Baltic countries tend to read the integration of these nations in the USSR in 1940 as some kind of intervention of Soviet forces in the internal affairs of those countries. However, most of them ignore or don’t consider the events that led to this scenario.
RESPONSE
Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression (Molotov-Ribbentrop) pact whose secret protocols divided the territories belonging to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Romania into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. Soviet occupation of the Baltic States lasted for 50 years and resulted in mass deportations and repressions against local populations. On 24 December 1989, the Parliament of the USSR, the Congress of the People’s Deputies, adopted a resolution, acknowledging the annexation of the Baltic states as a violation of the USSR's obligations. See other examples of disinformation narratives on the Baltic States, such as claims such as the “myth of Soviet occupation”; that Russian-speaking communities there are as discriminated as African Americans; that NATO wants to turn the Baltic countries into an empty field against Russia, and the US will betray and hand them over to Russia; that Lithuania is a hostage of US interests, Latvia is a US vassal state and Estonian foreign policy is controlled by Washington; or that the Pentagon is working out a biological war strategy in the Baltics.