 So I'm pleased to welcome you to today's webinar, which is jointly organized by the Telen University of Technology in Estonia and the Institute of International and European Affairs in Ireland. I am Andrew Roberts, I'm a cyber security specialist at the Telen University of Technology and I will be chairing today's event. So this webinar is part of the project Europe's Digital Future, which is coordinated by the Institute of International and European Affairs in Ireland. As part of this project, the IIEA has established a network of think tanks and academic institutions to share research and perspectives on Europe's digital future from across Northern Europe. To learn more about the project and to see the earlier events and publications in the series, you can visit www.iea.com. We're delighted to be joined today by a diverse panel of experts from across Europe who have been generous enough to take time out of their schedule to speak to us and address the question, how can the EU engage in the information space in times of crisis? Each panelist will speak for approximately 10 minutes today. We will then have a discussion with the speakers and questions from the audience. You will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once the speakers have finished their presentations. Reminder that today's presentation and question and answer session are both on the record. So please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handles at CybertelTech and at IIEA. So to give you an introduction to some of the speakers that we'll be enjoying today, we have Sim Kumpas, a Policy Officer at the East Strutcom Task Force of the European External Action Service. We have Oberst Leutnant Dr. Zonka, Leadering House from NATO Strutcom Centre of Excellence. We have Marcus Holmgren, Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Dr. Adrian Venables, a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Digital Forensics and Cyber Security at Tallinn University of Technology and Dominika Jantatz, an Information Security Analyst at Eurofins. So the first presentation will be made by Sim Kumpas. Sim serves as a Policy Officer at the East Strutcom Task Force of the European External Action Service, focusing on the EU's work against pro-Kremlin disinformation and foreign information manipulation more broadly. Before joining the EEAS, he held a similar portfolio at the Strategic Communication Department of the Government Office of Estonia from 2018 to 2021. Sim worked for the Ministry of the Interior from 2015 to 2018. Sim holds a Master of Arts in Communication Management from the University of Tartu. And today's presentation Sim will be providing, will be providing a wider EU perspective on this issue. So I now hand it over to Sim. Hi and thank you for the great introduction. Andrew, I hope you can hear me loud and clear. I will shoot up my slides in a second. I'm grateful if you can confirm whether you can see them and then I'm off. You can still see the slides? Yes, we can see the slides but you might want to enter presentation mode. Yes, perfect. So hi everyone. I said my name is Sim and I work for the European External Action Service which in short is the foreign arm of the EU. Today I'm going to use the 10 minutes to frame a bit our thinking when it comes to countering foreign information, manipulation and interference and bring a couple of examples of the work we've done throughout the Russia's war in Ukraine at the moment. For us, for quite some years we worked around the definition and the kind of the idea of disinformation which still is very much in use and broadly shared but we've moved a bit past that to something we call foreign information manipulation and interference. It's a bit of a mouthful but let me quickly explain why. So first disinformation is in our eyes just one part of the big problem. It's a piece of information that is knowingly misleading or factually wrong but let's take kind of another classical example, a network of pot accounts or fake accounts or kind of a coordinated activity around some kind of information that is not disinformation per se but that can and is being used to manipulate with information so hence our kind of thinking rather in terms of information manipulation more broadly. We added the foreign because I said we are the foreign arm of the EU meaning our mandate is to look at the external threats targeting the EU and our immediate neighbourhoods and the interference part in the end comes from the fact that when we've started looking at what China is doing their arsenal is much broader so they also for example suppress independent voices, the use censorship and other types of techniques that maybe wouldn't necessarily fall under information manipulation. Oh, my lights just went out but I hope you can still see me. So hence the interference in the end and how are we working to kind of tackle that? So we conceptually we're working on something called the kind of the teeny toolbox and while still in the making what it would include are four big elements. First situation of awareness so the kind of bread and butter this includes monitoring media, analysing media including social media this would include social research, public opinion polling all different types of research that is relevant in terms of us understanding what is happening in the information environment. Secondly building on that knowledge we've accumulated it's actually building resilience this would include many many things from raising threat level awareness to running public awareness campaigns to raising media and information literacy to many many other other things. Thirdly it's for us it's about disruption and regulatory responses and there are steps that the EU is taking at the moment be the digital services act the code of practice and this information. For example and lastly again being a foreign service we have a set of diplomatic responses that we can deploy everything from demarches political statements up to sanctions and other types of measures. If I'm coming to the resilience building part which for us would also include awareness raising and communication which is the topic of today's discussion. The war in Ukraine for us meant firstly a huge increase of outputs of different communications products be it campaigns full-on campaigns be it some smaller fact-checking initiatives debunks what have you and for us we have a couple of ways to do it so we have our very official EAS channels main ones of the HQ and also we have a huge diplomatic network across the world which we have heavily relied on in this in this war to push out their message in different languages and in kind of different nuances to really have them reach audiences on the grounds in in areas like Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific and so on and also what is probably I would say a strength of ours is we have something called EU versus disinfo which is one of our projects up and running since 2015 it is very publicly affiliated with the EU but it's not the official voice of the EU so we have the kind of the strength of the project having some share legitimacy with the EU but at the same time we're not necessarily constrained by what the official positions are meaning we can be much bolder much faster much more nimble in our communications than our kind of main communication channels as the EAS we also started putting out much more material in Ukrainian but also Russian reaching out to audiences speaking Russian in different countries and regions as said we have relied heavily on our network of delegations which really covers most of the world and is a big asset for us and we have explored a number of new channels that were previously off the table for officially EU purposes be it Telegram, be it Kentucky for example and just to bring a couple of examples and then I'm happy to pass on the mic to the next speaker I said EU versus info is one of the reasons it's great to have as an outreach channel for us is the fact that said it's a project run by the EU but it's not reflecting EU's official policies and kind of lines to take only meaning as said we can be much bolder so what have you done over the course of the war among other things is quite a lot of fact checking and there we can be pretty blunt because Russia is really you know they're really making it easy for us when we just take the things they they say their officials hierarchy and officials spokesperson say we show the reality on the ground the difference is just so great that it really speaks for itself also maybe a bit of a problematic trend that we've picked up over the past I would say couple of months is a program in sources using kind of fake fact checking as a way to push their narratives so they have kind of high checked a bit the idea of fact checking and put it into malicious use which is problematic first because it's sending out a kind of a disinforming narrative secondly it's I think eroding the whole idea of fact checking as a reliable way to kind of make the information sphere a better place if you will and what we've done with that is a couple of times just taken so the image on the right you can see it's everything in black is what Russia put out via their diplomatic networks everything you can see on the reds this is kind of our correction of it so something very quick and dirty that we put together in an hour and that included the validation process put it out there and in a matter of we did it I think on Friday by Monday it had picked up almost a quarter million views which is really in in in our terms I would say a really really wide wide reach even some some bigger campaigns that we've you know worked for much harder don't reach these numbers very often and two last examples and then I'm then I'm off for the time being I mentioned campaigns earlier so one of the ways to balance out the information environment is is obviously by by running awareness campaigns we've done a couple throughout the war one of them tried to bring together artists and and then and show the first the effect of war on cultural heritage in Ukraine and then secondly the other way around show the role of artists and their kind of efforts to really help the Ukrainian cause this was called art versus war second bigger one of ours was phases of Ukraine which was really there to show the human side of the suffering of what Russia is doing and give Ukrainians on the ground a voice and amplify to you audiences and and abroad widely and that is it I think I more or less used my 10 minutes so I will conclude here happy to pass on the baton and looking forward for the discussion later on thank you thank you very much same for a great presentation so our next speaker will be somka needering house so somka is a lieutenant colonel in the german army he has a masters in political science and a phd in philosophy both from Ludwig Maximilian's university in munich since 2019 he has been the german representative and staff officer for education and training at nato center of excellence for strategic communications in riga latvia he was previously the analyst for the information environment at the bundeswehr operational communication center in mayan germany he has also served a six-month urn mission in mali for the german contingent as comms advisor in 2017 and 2018 and lieutenant colonel dr somka needering house will give us a perspective of germany and the nato view yeah thank you very much for this kind introduction andrew yeah good afternoon from latvia great to be here on a panel and thank you for the invitation so the question that was given to us for this panel was how can they you engage in the information space in times of crisis what i would like to do is first give you some very brief ideas how nato is concerned with the very same issue so both organizations nato and you find themselves in the same environment that is what military calls information environment and that is the environment where we have seen over the last several years an escalation of information warfare and by information warfare i mean the increased weaponization of information and communications to achieve strategic goals and historically that's nothing new in general information and information dominance has always been a decisive factor from a military perspective but the digitalization and the new technologies have have boosted the relevance of information in general so what nato did in response to this development is the creation of its own military capability that we call strategic communications and that is an important point to make here so nato as a political military organization conceives of the information space as a military engagement space first of all while in general it is of course much broader than that so what i want to do is focus first on the military capability and the roles before going over to a much broader perspective so to better understand strategic communications as a military capability that we call stratcom shortly it can be can be split up in two major roles first of all there's a role for stratcom in military operations in particular ultimately it's always the role to achieve the cognitive effect for surrender of the opponent through any kinetic or non-kinetic activities but of course the opponent as a main actor is not the only audience you want a need to address for operational success what you also need is the understanding the acceptance and support of audiences as home at home as well as in the area of operations and that is a lesson nato painfully learned during Afghanistan where both audiences were lost in the end and none of our strategic goals were achieved so second role of stratcom then is and that is my opinion the much more important one that starts long before any military conflict and operation it's the role to prevent an armed conflict in the first place who credible deterrence either by denial or punishment and here the military instrument is only one of many others so this is where we have to stress the importance of a whole of government approach and from a stratcom perspective for all political challenges in the information space so whole including a whole of government approach would include strong diplomacy foreign policy as well as leverage through economic sanctions that is something where the EU in contrast to NATO has much more options of course and where both organizations can more more or less complement each other with similar strategic interests so these two roles role of communications in operations and the role of deterrence are mostly consensus or even common sense yet another role is much more controversial and that is the role of how to combat disinformation or information manipulation campaigns in our own societies so do government organizations in general have a legitimate role in assessing engaging with or influencing own audiences here again it is not necessary or even natural to think of the military organization in the lead for that it might become reasonable if you think of a disinformation campaign launched by a foreign power as an attack on your own country your own people and institutions for example but disinformation campaigns often start also from within the EU or member nations as well so I think it's not the most imminent question if the military has a role or not in fighting disinformation but to question what the role of government organizations is overall and here EU and NATO very much rely first on political public debate and decisions in their member nations so from my experience and here I'm talking about Germany for example there's a lack of these debates there's a lack of legitimacy for government organizations and institutions to take action and therefore the lack of structure and capabilities as a logical concept what Germany for example has done so far is not implemented stratcom nationally so neither structurally nor conceptually but we what we have done is implementation of for example law against crime on online platforms this is a necessary instrument to uphold rule of law online against hate speech crime but this is not the most effective way to counter disinformation in general if that is what our ultimate goal is here as well so in our liberal democracies of course state interference with society though it's sometimes necessary is not the fundamental idea ideally the media professional journalism or the self-regulatory powers of a free society would be strong enough to counter the threat of disinformation and the harm it brings to society and its members but arguably now we have already for some time reached a point where additional instruments should be considered and we also have reached a point where national structures alone are not sufficient to counter the threats of the information space the information space nowadays is transnational and its actors and networks are transnational as well that is something that has become very clear also through the research that we did at our center for example about information laundering throughout europe now the EU has already made a step forward by imposing a legal framework the digital services act for digital platforms that we heard already in the first briefing and we will see how this will affect online disinformation but as I said legislation is only one essential aspect to guarantee freedom and equality but it's only one aspect and yet disinformation is often connected to hostile narratives it's hard to counter those narratives by means of legislation in consequence other aspects I think play a significant role here as well for example education media online literacy pre banking and inoculation against disinformation for example this is also a lot of research studies that we did in these kind of fields at our center another possible unnecessary aspect from my opinion would be to create or expand the already existing institutions that counteract disinformation and information manipulation like for example on EU level it's already mentioned the EU versus disinfo as one example another good example from a national level is the psychological defense agency that Sweden has created so their mandate is also to identify and analyze and counter foreign melon information influence activities and other disinformation directed at their national at their nation and their national interests so here for the EU as well as for NATO it is beneficial to look into the member nations and see what is done there already what is successful learn from it and consider also an implementation on the international level let me wrap up my part here by saying that information is influence but that's a truism if you control the information if you control the author and the reader you control everything so from a purely autocratic perspective that might be appealing but not so much from democratic institutions from a perspective of democratic institutions as I said therefore we should carefully consider every action we take and how it affects our freedom of speech and how it strengthens rather than damages our democracies with this I would like to conclude my contribution here thanks again for having me on the panel and I'm looking forward to a discussion afterwards thank you very much for your presentation of us like and need drink house and so our next speaker will be Marcus Holmgren so Marcus works at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs focusing on great power competition over the internet architecture and on questions of digital resilience so Marcus will be giving a presentation today based on the Finnish perspective yes thank you for the introduction I am not a politician and not a civil servant so official Finnish perspective will have to be someone else's responsibility I will like concentrate more on the bring the conversation back to the level of the infrastructure digital infrastructure digital architecture of how can we maintain the capability of to communicate that if disturbances happen or when disturbances happen so that there is a space and autonomy that we can have discussions and conversations to respond to those actions this is very much a Finnish perspective in the sense that we have a proud history of strong resilience work and the preparedness and this is something that I am certain we will be looking forward to improve also in the in the context of nature with the upcoming membership that I'm certain that we will get there eventually no matter what how difficult it seems right now so going back to the actual topic the digital resilience I like to divide this area in four different categories talking about the infrastructure itself the supply chains that are necessary for maintaining this this infrastructure and in case of digital infrastructure it's especially important that they function well because the time for delay because the need for updates is so urgent the time for delay is not allowed to be very long so it is very important that the supply chains are diverse and the capabilities to strengthen them at the point of need are maintained in of course EU level and in national level as well this includes of course then not only the autonomy and coordination between the corporations that do this work but also the agreements that maintain the operational capability of these different corporations during the time of disturbances and this is the third dimension here the governance aspect but that is the strong suit of EU and where we can focus most we saw that the at the covid pandemic crisis that there wasn't enough trust between different european societies and border closures hamburgs a lot of different company operations supply chains couldn't function properly and many corporations needed to make service cuts service prioritizations because of they couldn't get their workers where they were needed because there wasn't correct amount of supply that supply chains didn't work and this is something that then hampered the capability to also main to participate in international communications which was visible for example in acquisition of different materials or critical healthcare materials this is of course not so matter of of european level discussion the threat or disturbance didn't influence our capability of holding talks very quickly european key organizations adjusted from their working style so that they could work remotely but of course they have a lot of difficulties and there are difficulties still and this just bring hampered hammers down the importance of having these structures prepared having the systems prepared and having the agreements there so that the governments know what they can do and what they can trust other nations to do so that no country in times of distress becomes to prioritize their own national production at the wrong place in the wrong time so that we would end up in the situation where the information space would actually diminish european wide because of these disruptions and here we come back to the fourth point which is expertise expertise i live here as separate because of it ties the all three together it is often the most difficult to to correct to repair damaged structures supply chains or even agreements that don't have have been found to not work for one reason or another if you don't have the expertise it is much lower to build the expertise if that is lost and for this reason it is really crucial that eu focuses on bringing innovation to the field of information space management of the digital infrastructure and here of course not only talking about internet but also more traditional ways of communication that these fields constantly develop so that the when unforeseen circumstances happen there is ample source of capable expertise capable labor force to respond to innovate to find solutions to solve the issues causing the disturbances to repair or replace damaged communication networks or service spaces this is of course somewhat different whether we are talking about malicious disturbances or accidental disturbances if we are talking about war or natural disasters for example it creates a massive difference in the sense of what kind of technologies can be utilized what kind of solutions are acceptable for in case of war as we have seen in Ukraine remote connections wireless connections are not really an option because they are too easy to target to detect and target with artillery fire with other kinds of disturbances and of course also because of in time in case of any kind of malicious disturbances there is a heightened need to hide information to have secure connections and of course a traditional way of to do this is to meet up in person but in modern times operational time frames are often so short that we cannot expect that to be a possibility in any many occasions which just creates or highlights the importance for european wide secure connection network of securing the diverse infrastructure and capabilities for maintaining the discussions maintaining the information space to make these conversations to have even the possibility to find a common way to respond into these disturbances and this is true whether the disturbance is malicious or accidental or natural i think my 10 minutes are up from here and i'm looking forward to participating in in in conversation and then perhaps continuing with this topic and maybe having some interaction between this perspective and the more information management side of the issue thank you thank you very much Marcus for an interesting presentation so next speaker will be dr adrian venerables so dr venerables served in the uk royal navy for 24 years as a communications warfare intelligence officer since leaving the royal navy has published a series of journal articles and research papers on the cyber threat landscape and it's used by state and non-state actors for espionage sabotage and subversion adrian joined town university of technology in estonia as a senior researcher in 2018 specializing in cyber strategy and its role in information and influence operations he retains his military rink links by serving as a commander in the royal navy reserve supporting uk cyber resilience activities in the Baltic region adrian thank you um i just think you can um see the magic of zoom even though i'm muted you can hear me as andrew nice sitting next to each other um let me just um share my screen there we go my more magic um okay so i'm going to talk about the estonian perspective of the information environment in times of crisis and really there is only one one story here from estonia and that's uh what is happening in in in ukraine um now ironically um not missed here the the invasion of ukraine on 24th of february coincided with estonia's independence day when statehood was declared in in 1918 from from russia um now the estonians are um of a generous and with a smile will say that it is or it has been there their national sport of um highlighting the russian threat and after the after the invasion there was certainly an element of we told you so um but um without being smug so there was this element um within within the media and to the wider information environment particularly in europe say yes you've criticized us for um constantly highlighting the russian threat but uh you you know um from our backgrounds we know what we're talking about and uh and of course geographically and historically speaking uh estonia is they're used to being on the front line with russia and very much engaging in the information environment against russian propaganda and russian disinformation so being they're used to this this sort of environment um the estonian government um military and um other organizations very much directed an information campaign to promote their narrative and they did it very much on on two fronts and this is very interesting from an academic perspective and looking at how the narratives differ slightly because uh estonia is very much looking at promoting a particular story narrative to a wider european audience as well as to uh to russia encountering russian disinformation and russia's own narrative um an interesting quote which is sort of doing the rounds here is that um we don't fear russia's strength only the west's weakness now estonia of a small country obviously knows it militarily and if it is not comparable to any military threat from russia but with nato and the broader political alliance of the u there is certainly strengthened numbers and so there's very much this uh this emphasis of estonia promoting um the unity within within europe of um countering um the russian the russian threat and in doing so it's very interesting to look at um the different narratives that in that have been promoted within within the eu there's a very uncompromising um story um being being promoted here within estonia and also indeed from the other Baltic states of russia must be defeated and there must be a um an uncompromising view of um uh one aim of of the the russian threat must be mitigated both politically and and military and certainly from the Baltic states historical examples are used and that there's a whole a whole room of um uh russian um active measures which have been used in uh in estonia and broader in the former soviet states and these are being used to promote the the methods to counter the current threats um the estonian prime minister has um gained plaudits within um within eu and broader globally actually has been very active in engaging this media campaign within the european um environment to promote um estonia's narrative and um and this element of an uncompromising defeat of russia um she's also warned that um there will be pain of of sanctions and the uh the eu um and and why the global sanctions against russia will obviously have an effect upon um upon europe and there will be pain but this pain is is worth it and um trying to promote the the european um solidarity there have been some criticism of france germany in particular this element of russia must be given an escape plan russia mustn't be humiliated and there's going to be a way out for putin and there has been some criticism of that within the the information environment within within estonia and the Baltic states and it has been very interesting to see how this this crisis element has been uh has been countered within within the eu and the focus from from the Baltic aspect estonia was one of the first eu countries to label um russia's actions in ukraine as genocide and that's a very strong word um but certainly um estonia has not um been treated from that and has been very strongly promoting it um estonia has also been very prominent in the information environment of um calling for ukraine to be a uh a strong candidate for a future EU membership and this is something which um certainly is is very active in the european parliament and EU commission at the moment and indeed um estonia along with the other Baltic states poland and it states which haven't had this historical link to to russian aggression calling for ukraine to be a prominent public member of the EU in the future and that's been that's been very interesting um estonia has also promoted that the EU has a moral duty that um ukraine needs to be uh be part of of the EU and that's been very prominent within the information environment here now looking at away from europe and looking at countering the russian propaganda the russians narrative um estonia was very quick um the day after the the invasion to ban from broadcasting a number of russian and Belarusian tv channels in estonia and these these broadcasts as well as um free-to-air broadcasts which obviously from russia only has limited coverage in estonia a lot of it is is online and so um estonia has banned the nations which or the stations which i've listed there um obviously with a strong russian speaking population and estonian tv actually has his own russian language channel which is focused on the the ethnic russian minority for whom russian is the um the native tongue and many of the the ethnic russians here don't speak estonian particularly well or at all so having a state broadcaster broadcasting in russian gives a very strong message both to ethnic russians here but also to um to russians in russia and um and native russians around around the world promoting a certain uh narrative from from this part of the world and the estonian tech regulator uh in beginning of march uh blocked access to a number of russian websites which i've listed listed there um that may appear to be um significant um however a little bit of big research indicated that these sites can actually be uh easily accessed via via a vpn so it has limited um real world um implications and practical censorship of the russian narrative but still promotes that message that um we are doing all that we can to limit the um russian propaganda and the russian message into the Baltic states and um trying to direct people to um to the more european focus of of events that are going on now for those who are not familiar with the Baltic states um a little bit of background um estonia of a small country um 1.1.3 million only i mean there's uh um 67 million in london so it is very small and and the estonians actually have been very um they quick to point out that um russia uh within ukraine have deported out of ukraine into russia um more ukradians than the entire population of estonia to put into context of both what is happening in ukraine but also the size of the estonian population so 300 000 of these uh 1.3 million um estonians um are native native russian speakers um they have strong cultural and ethnic um and indeed family relations to to russia and and there is this common scenario within russia that it will attack other countries in order to protect its diaspora and this was one of the reasons why russia invaded initially in in east eastern ukraine and so there's obviously that um that very careful promotion of the um of the estonian narrative and the estonian philosophy to um to make sure that we're not seen as being attacking of this ethnic ethnic russian minority so range of media channels is used to promote the the um the Baltic Baltic narrative and using media channels including um as i've said the the russian tv channel um this also counters um some facebook that i've quoted there of um some very pro pro russian prussian narratives there um as i come to come to an end here as andrew's telling me to come to an end um there is a um uh indications that actually the these effects are having um are being successful and that russian speaking estonians are increasingly turning to uh to estonian estonian media and we've also also seen some um uh eviction um or uh expelled russian diplomats from from estonia as well reducing the the russian narrative that has been uh and been promoted and um that less lessening of russian influence in in estonia i think i've mentioned much much of this the uh the estonian um or the ethnic russians minority is primary in the east of the country and um and certainly we've seen a reduction in the effectiveness of the russian propaganda and particularly directing the older population who generally have been more more pro pro preputing um what has been has been interesting is also we've seen um estonian population have been quite effective encountering um russian information campaigns um dominica may recognize the language but certainly the the estonians within social media have been very good in looking for where there's been disinformation and have been and have been countering this and uh and certainly social media has been very absolutely disembarked just in the yeah so to conclude here um so um historically information campaign um information crisis has been um prominent here and we are very used to dealing with it estonia is fighting on two fronts uh estonian and uh european and and russia and certainly we've seen some successes in in in this campaign thank you very much uh commander van emels so our next speaker will be dominica helina agantas dominica is a security instant response analyst for europeans and she recently attained her master's degree um related to her talk today uh so yeah um dominica the floor is yours thank you for this introduction let me uh we can't hear you dominica oh no can you hear me now no i can no okay so some people hear me and some not okay okay um just so you know andrew i don't hear you yes you're all good my about my apology okay cool um let me let me share my screen all good yes please continue okay so carrying the torch of the previous conversations uh now the discussion will be moved to the cases of greece in poland i have lived in both countries i'm constantly traveling to greece and currently i'm living in poland so the press social media and societies of both countries are familiar to me the main focus is put upon the latest developments in ukraine and how this issue is perceived in greece compared to poland so let's start with greece and the approach of its government the greek government condemns ladimur putin's attack on ukraine specifically right after the attack mitzvotakis the prime minister of greece clearly stated that greece stands by the side of ukraine and this was also expressed with the sending uh humanitarian aid military supplies reception of thousands of refugees from ukraine and also supporting ukraine's EU membership at this point i would like to highlight that greece is opposed to the fast truck solution when it comes to ukraine joining european union its position is basically that all procedures which are provided in the article 49 of the european union treaty should be followed athens places a priority on the western balkan succession process which must be sustained and accelerated it also insists on the region's european perspective being a top priority and also many of the balkan countries have already taken significant steps towards their admission like implementing necessary reforms and satisfying several commitments for their EU membership now the greek society is divided a mid-march survey which was conducted by political showed that 60 of greeks found russian's invasion in ukraine unacceptable compared to actually 88% 86% 82% and 78% in netherland spain germany and france respectively so many greeks sympathize with russia fasting for most because of their shared orthodox faith the russians for centuries have been presenting themselves as the protectors of the orthodox christians during the ottoman empire so the myth of the great savior in the east is strongly untrued in the greek culture many people with right-wing convictions which are also members of the conservative party still believe that for some magical reason the russians are going to take instable which was firmly the orthodox stronghold of constantable liberated and give it to greeks fulfilling the dream of a new busentine empire many greeks seem to fear that supporting sanctions and boycotting russian goods could hurt greece prices for certain products including electricity and gas have risen sharply in greece so it's expected that most people fear that those measures against mosca will have an impact on their economic situation what is more 39% of greeks support that ukrain should not be submitted an EU membership at all 38% of them feel that greece is not put into danger due to the ukrainian war and also they refer to the imperialistic nature of the EU as it joined the NATO forces in ukoslavia afghanistan syria and libya what i'm trying to say here is that the percentages of people who are not going against or not opposed to russians military actions in ukraine are just significantly higher compared to other EU countries moving on i have included some images taken during the first day of the invasion in ukraine so there are definitely parts of greeks society will which stand by the side of ukraine but at the same time there are people like this on these images where you see demonstrations supporting putin russia and the orthodox spirit such expressions are not really common in other european countries by checking the greek press i can see that it mostly uses the term war in ukraine it also seems to be divided with no clear expression of solidarity for ukraine it mostly correlates all development that happened in ukraine to those in cyprus and turkey it blames united states EU and NATO for provoking putin it does not cover the contributions of the local greek communities which support ukrainians and also does not really remind people that the war is still ongoing and finally does not actively report on the newest developments finally i found some interesting tweets of greek politicians referring to the attack on ukraine so as you can see on the slide mr marcus said putin will be remembered and go down in history as a great and worthy leader and now the tweet says bravo chase them all the way to germany like before zelensky is begging europe and nato to get involved he's trying to start world war three pray that he shuts up and finally may god protect president putin and all the russians fighting for freedom so we go to taste how greeks deals with the attack in ukraine and now let's see how poland manages this issue poland has been one of the ukrain's most vocalized since the beginning of the war war so has repeatedly called on the EU to impose harsha sanctions on russia and also has moved to introduce some of its own ahead of other european partners and it also has committed itself to ending all russian energy imports this year uh generally poland has established itself also as the main conduit of weapons and aid from west ukraine the bolish government has supported ukraine's ambitions to join the EU with the so-called fast track uh prime minister of poland matthew smorovetsky and his cheque and slovenian counterparts became the first foreign leaders to visit Kiev since russian invasion and war so has also pushed for a tough military response to mosco's aggression it has provided equipment to ukraine it sought to strengthen nato's presence on the eastern flank and also passed a law boosting the defense of poland to the defense spending to three percent of gdpr uh since russia launched its war poland has also been on the front line of providing support to ukraine as it has received around four million of refugees for now which is far more than any country also polish society uh and politicians have largely welcomed those fleeing ukraine so alongside public support uh expressed with free public transport polish id numbers and help for families that host ukrainians there has been a massive support from society in the form of everyday activism so polish retailers and consumers uh have joined this efforts they remove russian and bolar russian products from their shelves and their baskets in a display of solidarity with ukraine uh firms which continue to do business in russia they are added in the cold list of shame in poland which results in protest and consumer boycotts um restaurants and shops around poland have changed the names of the russian dumplings which is one of the country's most popular and traditional dishes to ukrainian which also is an expression of solidarity with the eastern neighbor um as for the society polish society has a clear a united stance towards the war in ukraine this is confirmed by polls conducted within a period of february uh till march specifically 84 percent of polish responders support taking refugees from ukraine 70 percent believe that their government should add even more sanctions on the russian government the main feelings uh associated with the war is fear and sadness and this fear comes from the fact that the events in ukraine endanger the security of poland 80 percent believe that uh a full embargo on russian crude oils and gas should be should be put despite the fact that uh this will lead to even higher prices of goods uh 77 77 percent 47 percent describe natures actions as two cautious 68 percent believe that natures should give ukraine also offensive weapons and finally only 90 of people support that poland should continue the diplomatic ties to russia these images uh show all above i mentioned taken from all around poland uh the first image on the top is actually the city i live so from the first day of the invasion till actually even yesterday the lights on this uh monument have not changed pressing poland it delineates the human aspect of war shows the pain and atrocities the phrases that are most commonly used are not war in ukraine but invasion genocide attack occupation and war crimes it criticizes uh european union for playing it safe and actually asks for more it reminds pols that the war has not ended uh it reminds them to support ukraine and provides uh numerous ways and information on how to do this and finally it gives precise and immediate coverage of the events in ukraine so all in all this short presentation showed that war in ukraine was an exogenous shock which accentuated divergences among the EU countries it also brought uh new lines of political division depending also on the country's energy mix and degree of dependence on russia divisions are also seen within the societies based on the religious and political beliefs what is remarkable in the case of poland is that whole nation and government stand united and focus on the human aspect and suffering of the ukrainians despite the controversies and turbulences in polish ukrainian relations of the past that's that's all for me thank you very much thank you very very much for dominica for a really interesting presentation uh so now we'll move into the panel panel discussion component of today's uh today's seminar and we've got thankfully quite a few questions um so i'll start off with a question raised by sian fitzgerald a security and defense researcher from iiea so russian military doctrine indicates that all other forms of military activity in the conflict space are subordinate to an information campaign since civilians and civilian means of information dissemination are now the primary target of russian operations would this likely mean that a whole of government approach is only a partial defense and that we should instead be looking at focusing on the whole society approach to defend against hostile activity in the information space so i thought perhaps the best way to start this off would be um perhaps a seam if you could have a response to it um as it kind of fits in nicely with um the kind of research you're doing around the development of a femi toolbox and developing these kind of counter disinformation tools uh to involve all of society in not just a government approach yes sure and uh thanks for the great question um a very short answer to this would be yes and i would be done with my response i will add just a bit more detail um why i say yes is that first uh all levels i said all levels of the society are targeted if we're talking about um kind of an information being used as a weapon as a part of a wider uh kind of military arsenal then then absolutely first we're all victims hence we all need to be kind of factoring to uh our work against this type of activity second we all have different types of roles to play um there are steps that the governments can can do and and are doing there are steps that uh journalists can take they have a special role in in democratic societies uh as the guardians of civil society again a different role our education system so on so forth so as we all can contribute to our kind of collective response and our collective resilience again another reason for involving the whole society and and my last thought here is that um even if we kind of move from a very strict military um application of information manipulation towards the wider problem of of disinformation and and misinformation and malinformation then again we kind of can use many of the same responses to tackle these types of a bit more softer maybe size of information manipulation because to an extent to a very large extent the responses and steps to build resilience to information manipulation be it in a military context or non-military context are the same so again just to reiterate the answer is a very strong yes thank you i might try to get obus lint needering house on this topic because you talked about in your um presentation ensuring that the policies and uh the kind of focus was on this whole of society approach so how to engage the whole of society not just a government approach yeah thank you very much for the question i think it's a very very good and very interesting basic question so what i want to try to focus first on was that we talk about military conflict military crisis then it's never only just the military so that's first of all what i wanted to focus it's never only the military branch of government but it's always a whole of government responsibility but it doesn't end there the government of course um so the traditional instruments of power for government are diplomacy information military and economy but as the question like already like shows us that that's not enough to to to secure our information space so we need more than that i already also mentioned briefly that in terms of education we need to be better in terms of NGOs maybe that that can help with that society activities groups unions also startup companies there are a lot of new startup companies that are combating disinformation providing to their customers information security so it's it's much more than only government and to be honest government is also not the best during this kind of things so out of society there are much more new evolving ideas techniques and also structures that that can help us to counter these information hostile information activities and that's a good thing about i mean our free democracy so we have these these kind of grassroots movements and also like companies that are evolving out of the necessity for democratic society to to protect itself apart from the government that also has of course the role definitely thank you very much as we have a million and one questions coming through i might give you ones that are kind of targeted on new presentations to make it so we get through as much content as possible so i was wondering um marcus you gave your presentation on the kind of digital infrastructure and the the importance in in terms of information management this is about a two hour question which could have its own couple of phd's but what do you see as potentially the role of you know emerging technologies like artificial intelligence to manage the information space as well as to do things such as you know the generation of disinformation as well as the detection of disinformation yes thank you and really simple and easy question but i think the here i also i could i could just answer yes because the the the role of of i of of machine learning on this like loads of different technologies are going to be massive and for whether they are massive for better or for worse of course depends much of the capabilities that that we have and those featuring though like causing the disturbances have so here again of course the difference between malicious disturbances war and the like and the natural disturbances is huge because in case of war we are we enter into this kind of armament competition of between the disruption and attacking and spying capabilities and then the resilience and preparation and deterrence capabilities on the other side and this dynamic of course is completely lacking in the case of natural disasters or pandemic crisis or they're like this is in this kind of case of course the emerging technologies like like the actual 5G when we when we eventually enter and the spread of this connection options is going to be of immense help and i believe that also artificial intelligence will solely be of possible positive development in this this phase or this side of the issue because of it can help us detect the delays detect the where the problem actually is such as solutions and as as this capability is spreading it is really a general purpose technology that will spread everywhere and it is only in the malicious side of the issue that we will end with a lot of new threats a lot of new kinds of disturbances that we have to be prepared of and just to finish up i think the most important thing that EU could do here to prepare for this this changes that the emerging technologies are going to bring is to speed up the standard unification of standardization process currently the single market for high tech solutions doesn't entirely cover like reach the single market it is not really there yet because of in many cases like a medtech and even platform algorithms lot of the corporations have to have the standardizations and orders for different member states individual which makes which breaks up the single market and it gives a huge competitive advantage of the larger single markets that that in the sense that those single markets that have single out system so unification of this would be of immense help of developing the know how the innovation and the strong corporations private companies that we are going to need for maintaining the strategic autonomy in case of disturbances thank you thank you for succinctly answering such a big topic for me so i'll jump around a bit purely because we got so many questions so the next one i'll address to dr van boule so as the information space is now becoming increasingly militarized and instrumentalized by the russian federation is there now a necessity for countries like island to prioritize replicating dedicated information warfare assets in its military of the kind of the british army's 77th brigade yeah um is 77th grade is a military organization that is is focused at a operational and tactical level um in a in a military environment um what we're looking at here is very much strategic and strategic communications um and so it's very much more of a government level aspect so information warfare units in the military are certainly important and have a place but i think what we're looking at here where it's um at a higher level um we're looking at a whole a government whole a society level of um making sure that um both um a a country and a society fully understands what's going on and is able to both recognize and counter um propaganda and disinformation from from an adversary um without having to constantly feed them the case of this is right this is wrong what we ideally want is for populations as a whole to be much more questioning of what they see and to be able to make to make their own decisions so i think what we're emphasizing here is that the the invasion of ukraine um with the problems of social media in this campaign um it's highlighted the importance of the information environment it's highlighted the fact that everybody um military government civilians military population we are all information warriors we are all part of this and we'll have a role to play in being able to discuss recognize and counter disinformation where we sit thank you i might also pass this question on to us like the needering house here also i think commented in this presentation about the development of specific capabilities in sweden and germany in relation to um you know countering disinformation uh so to the question is it necessary for a country such as ireland to develop a specific military capability um in this in this regard um that's a good question i would say it's it's not it would be good to have a bit ability definitely but doesn't need to be a military one that was like the bottom line also of my presentation so 77 spraguet as um dr venable said is is a military capability of united kingdom um we have similar military capabilities in germany for specifically operational purposes on the operational tactical level in the nato operation for example or a new mission but this is very much focused then on the operational environment and to gain an information dominance for for a certain mission for a certain um you know operating environment so the very good question is and that's also a question i rose so these these units that are there um for a conflict um for operations what would what could be their role also in peace time or in in a time that is considered a hybrid conflict situation so is there a role for them also um work towards their nation and towards their national security during during these times um or is there not um so that that would be the question for the military capabilities in particular um what i mentioned with sweden for example was that they have a psychological defense agency and that's not a military uh institution so they have this under the ministry of of justice so they specifically considered this a civilian institution therefore and um but it also has the task for securing their society their nation from hostile information influence campaigns this is something that could also of course be done by a military unit as a 77th brigade or they can support could support this uh but this is what i meant with lack of political debate and legitimization uh done on the political level on the society level public level uh with regards to what what what can be the role what is the legitimate role also of military units uh first of all and then also of course of government uh in general uh interfering in the information space from my perspective yeah there's a role um there should be a role um the threat is clear i mean we all see it threat it was presented through several presentations today also so um we just have to figure this out what is the best way what is the best balance and i think the balance was also one of the other questions what is the best balance to call that is um this hostile aggressions in the information space thank you um so i might doctor this question just a bit um and ask this uh to dominica um so in the kind of course of your study about the polish and um Greek kind of information environment um what do you think the rest of uh europe can learn um from the experience of uh Greece and Poland encountering uh russian disinformation and influence campaigns sorry thank you for this question so the thing that other european countries can learn especially for polish people is basically to stay united united and think about more uh there is a strategic part behind the war but also think about uh the fact that uh here we are we have lots of refugees there is an ongoing crisis and despite the fact that poland is actually uh geographically really close to ukraine uh still it's like a domino um when one state fails the other states will fail as well because it's a whole network all the european union it's like all countries together so that's that's the thing that uh other countries should learn from poland now when it comes to Greece there is definitely uh it's really important to have a proper um filtering of information and cross-checking the information that is available from different sources uh because that's the only way but being aware it's the only way to actually understand what type of information is propaganda is a threat or not this is not implemented uh highly in Greece that's why there is so much confusion and division within the society and press but in poland it's it's they just focused on on the aspect of of the human factor that's why they do not get so deeply into the propaganda that are spread by the by the russian government thank you um so i might open this question up for everyone because i've got quite a few questions of a different variety related to it and then basically there's been bans on these russian news outlets with the rt sputnik as such and the question goes to the values of the EU as a society as one that's you know democratic and open and whether it's freedom of expression how do we ensure that um you know we can we can enact things like banning these uh uh media outlets um whilst also retaining you know our fundamental sense of you know freedoms and liberties and is there any conflicts in these actions so i thought i might start with sim and then we can go across and everyone can have a viewpoint about this thanks yeah i mean i would divide this into kind of two sets of answers very quickly first this we should look at media environment and secondly everything to do with the social media uh when it comes to media then there are a couple of things there first i think there should be a clearer understanding of what is journalism um because not you know these days everyone can really call themselves a journalist and then really uh want the kind of benefits that come with that be it source protection be it something else um while as there are internationally recognized uh voluntary professional standards ethical standards for journalism that journalists themselves have put down now if you have an outlet like sputnik rt who don't really follow nearly any of the self-regulatory elements or aspects and quite the opposite they have over the past years they have openly stated that they are rather to be seen as a part of their country's defensive capabilities then my question is why are we so adamant that trying to frame them as journalism that is the first thing if we discuss whether banning or sanctioning rt and sputnik is limiting the medium freedom of media we have already lost in the sense that we are really dancing to their to their rhythm and their tune so we should really draw a line between journalism that needs extra attention and extra protection and then everything else sputnik and rt fall very much into everything else category so I think what the u has done at the moment that has a very limited time frame and is a direct reaction to Russia's war in Ukraine is is legally sound and and morally even more so uh the second part is everything to do with social media platforms and there as well the user approach has been to not look so much at what uh you know as a specific or individual pieces of content it's something you know if actually correct or not if we take the digital services act and the code of practice that kind of goes hand in hand with it to an extent I would say the focus is very much on more transparency by the platforms that are at the moment still very much black boxes some more some even more so none of them are really open and secondly it's about empowering empowering users giving them more kind of tools to maybe opt out from algorithmic editorial design etc etc and last point here is as we don't really know a previous speaker mentioned emerging threats we can't really foresee the emerging threats yes we can conduct studies and analysis all of that but we really have to be flexible so the dsa introduces something called systemic risks and and this is what the platforms are going to have to assess and those risks can change and we're here talking mainly about kind of yeah systemic risks in the sense that what are the kind of design flaws if you will of different platforms that enable malicious actors to use those weak points or design flaws to push mis and disinformation there's much more to be said about this but I'm gonna hand over the baton to the other speakers thanks thank you so perhaps Marcus you could give us your thoughts on this topic yes thank you just very briefly I have a one-half points the point one is that the common rules common clearly written shared rules are very important here because that creates the impartiality it's the rule of law approach democracy's function as long as we have the shared rules and not everything is up to debate and then the half part of first is that these rules need to be then not technological oriented they have to be something that that allow allow ruling or rulings over the situations no matter what technologies were used in the course for for this disinformation campaign purposes and here restraint is also very important we are talking about enforcement of rules not engaging in a similar manner we too have a great capability of creating disinformation of creating very efficient bots for example in twitter or the platforms to to promote freedom pro pro human rights information but we shouldn't do that that is engaging in in a whole different wrong way and accelerating the problem in this kind of arms race situation that I talked about earlier instead of just sticking down of enforcing the rules that are clearly written and getting better at enforcing them thank you Soko would you like to say something about this um yeah thank you oh just very briefly so with regards to media and should you allow russian media to operate in the EU uh I mean no country is like obliged to let a foreign country's state run propaganda outlet to operate on their own soil so I don't think that's that's a legal problem uh it's more like I think it's more like a technical problem because you can as I said operate on your own soil but how do you really like prevent them to operate I mean over the internet you can access them from everywhere so they can easily escape these kind of events and of course they would love to have their stations also running in Berlin and then the broadcast from there from the studio so they don't have this opportunity now but nonetheless as I that's also comes back to what I said I think the legal aspect of combating disinformation is one aspect but it's it's not the only one and not the most important one it's it's more like really taking taking proactive actions so banning yes I think it's possible and it's also legitimate to ban these kind of non-media outlets but it's it's only one tick in the box so thank you Adrian yeah yeah just one uh just one point to that um we here in a rules-based international order here in the west we have certain rules of the media how they govern impartiality we have to understand that our adversaries don't operate to those those same rules and so any criticism of stifling muting Russian media is seen as a infringement of freedom of information and debate we need to understand that they are operating to different rules and that what are overtly propaganda mechanisms need to be defeated so we don't all play to the same rules and we have to adjust to that thank you and I'll give the last comment to Dominica about this topic of um you know values and uh you know banning as we say we're not not exactly media outlets but maybe other nations states operations so what poland actually gave it's it's his response to to the propaganda of russia is basically approach all the important media outlets social media companies to block the the russian presidents online and what started to create was alternative means of uh communication and uh information in russian language which were filtered out and definitely were kind of more uh where let's say we're not coming from the mainstream and from there from the outlets in russia so this is one one approach that I saw to to the topic of how to uh balance this uh from one side the freedom of speech and from the other sides you have some control over it uh well in in poland it's actually effective uh in most cases I have seen that many countries have blocked uh russian uh russian content in the in their platforms but um the second approach the fact that you still allow kind of content from russia related to russia it's something that many countries could think about how to balance this things out so I think we uh we've come to an end uh today of our seminar um so I'd like to thank all of our panelists for your presentations and for your uh interesting views and opinions it's been excellent I'd like to thank uh Andrew Gilmour and the IIEA um for organizing uh this seminar and um the interesting uh debate that we've had today and I'd also like to thank the audience and attendees for um attending and I think if you want to have you know further information based on um the discussion we've had today I'm sure there's some great content and research on uh IIEA's website um as well as the east strutcom task force and uh some of the interesting tools they have like the EU versus disinfo uh twitter site which is always good fun and also the great research which comes out of um the nato strutcom um and uh also interesting research from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs so I'd like to thank you uh for your time today and um wish you the best thank you very much