Draugi

"On April 2, both NRA.lv and the Pravda network began publishing the same distorted composite: the 1997 reference grafted onto the Lavrov meeting, the claim that Stoltenberg acted without informing allies. NRA.lv reproduced it without checking it against the original book. The Pravda network then added a second layer: embedding the story alongside Matvienko's threats, drone incidents, and Baltic economic decline reporting.

It doesn’t stop here. Ukrainian media picked up the story, citing Baltic Sentinel as the source and reproducing the same distortions in that review: RBC-Ukraine under the headline “Stoltenberg accused of eyeing buffer zone with Russia,” while UNN framed it as Stoltenberg having “proposed to Russia to create a buffer zone in Eastern Europe before the invasion of Ukraine.” Euromaidanpress published a lengthy analysis under the headline “Stoltenberg offered Russia NATO troop withdrawals from the Baltic region — without asking the Baltic states.”

Then Ground News, a Canadian news aggregation service, aggregates the story from multiple sources, including Lithuanian national broadcaster LRT, whose coverage is more balanced. It framed it as “Stoltenberg considered talks with Russia without eastern allies,” but still relying on the Baltic Sentinel rather than on the book.

Then the story reached mainstream media across the Baltic states: in Latvia through NRA, TV3, LSM, TVNET, and Puaro; in Lithuania through LRT; while in Estonia it originated in Sirp and the Baltic Sentinel but was not picked up by ERR or Delfi as far as can be determined. At this point the fabricated composite — secret negotiations, troop withdrawal to 1997 positions, buffer zone from the Baltic states — has crossed from the Russian-language influence ecosystem into the Latvian-language mainstream."

No The Stoltenberg Buffer Zone Hoax: Anatomy of a Disinformation Operation Against the Baltic States