DISINFO: Latvians find NATO's ‘blind’ missiles in the gardens and military equipment on the roads
SUMMARY
Latvians have ‘blind’ missiles being dropped in their gardens and finding lost military equipment on the roads. NATO soldiers are completely ignoring the local laws in the Baltic countries: fighting, debauchery, and vandalism are constant ‘side effects’ of these anti-Russian drills.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about NATO and the Baltic States.
Sputnik uses footage showing a post published by a Facebook user, Oksana Bondarenko (now Laimīgās Stundas) on December 14, 2019. The author of the post indicated Tīnūžu pagasts as a location which is in Ikšķile municipality, in the central part of the country, some 200 km away from Daugavpils, where the NATO base is located.
Another footage that we see in the video, which according to Sputnik, shows the current protests in Latvia, is from 2016. That year, on June 6, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment arrived in Daugavpils and conducted a training operation Dragoon Ride. It was that day when Representatives of the Latvian Armed Forces and Police removed the poster with text attacking US soldiers in Latvia. An administrative case has been initiated for placing a poster without permission. Then-President of Latvia Raimonds Vējonis later said in his TV statement that this was an isolated incident and did not reflect the general attitudes of Latvians.
See more debunking by Myth Detector. Read here similar cases claiming that Lithuania is temporarily NATO-occupied territory ruled by non-Lithuanians, that Eastern European countries in NATO are under Washington’s political and military control, that the US views the Baltic states not as independent countries but as a NATO springboard for conducting a military attack against Belarus and Russia, and that the Baltic states are dying because they chose not to be with Russia.