The West is slowly, but rises. Pressure on Russia will become more intense. What was possible for the Kremlin yesterday is no longer possible today, and what is possible even today will not be possible tomorrow. The opportunities of Kremlin strategists in international politics and international economic relations are rapidly melting. Access to technology and financial markets are being closed, and without this, as history has shown, Russia is beginning to lag rapidly behind civilization and the standard of living.
On Thursday, several dozen of European and American security experts, as well as parliamentarians from 21 countries, signed the Prague Declaration, a document that calls on Western leaders, especially the EU leadership, “to stop trying to avoid mentioning Russia as the main source of hostile disinformation.”
In a document signed, among others, by the deputy chairman of the European Parliament, Pavel Telichka from the Czech Republic, the initiator of the campaign for the adoption of the “Magnitsky Acts” Bill Browder and former president of Radio Liberty / Radio Free Europe Jeffrey Gedmin, says that European structures, EU representative for foreign policy Federica Mogherini, are engaged in “pacification” of Russia and are trying to continue to deal with it, despite the information attack from its side.
“While the United States is investigating an obviously hostile invasion of the holy of holies of democracy – interference in the election process – such an investigation has not started anywhere in Europe. This remains a fact, although there have been obvious cases of blatant Russian interference in Dutch, British and Italian referendums, elections in France and, more recently, German elections and the Catalan referendum. In all these cases, the intervention was aimed at weakening the West, weakening the democratic system, creating more chaos and deepening the differences in our societies. While the EU and NATO are top priorities, their protective actions remain rather limited. This clearly shows that a significant part of the Western political establishment still does not recognize the type of threat that we face,” the Prague Declaration says.
The signatories of the declaration invite the governments of Western countries and interstate associations, such as the EU and NATO, to take several steps to more effectively confront the Russian information threat.
First of all, they suggest to understand the level of this threat and be ready to respond toughly: “If Moscow does not stop (to exert a hostile influence on the internal affairs of Western countries), additional sanctions should be imposed on families and the environment of Russian leaders to exert pressure on them with a view to ending such actions “.
Also, the authors of the document urge to investigate and uncover such influence at the national level, in particular, to form commissions of inquiry in the parliaments of the countries “to collect and investigate evidence of Moscow’s influence and its diplomatic activity.”
Another necessary action is the study with the help of public opinion polls, to what extent Russia has succeeded in its informational impact on different sectors of Western society.
Countries concerned about Russian intervention should form working groups to work out a unified reaction; understanding of the problem should go beyond the range of specialists and rise to the political level; the Russian authorities must hear the clear demand of Western leaders to stop information attacks – these steps complete the list of actions that, according to the signatories of the Prague Declaration, can help the West to resist the influence of Russia.
The initiator of the signing of the Prague Declaration was Yakub Yanda, the editor-in-chief of the Kremlin Watch, produced by the independent analytical center “European Values” in Prague.
Yakub Yanda said that the collection of signatures under the plan of harsh actions against Russian information interference was prompted by the policy pursued by Federica Mogherini: “She clearly adheres to the line of appeasement of Russia, continuing to deal with it, as if nothing is happening. This is strange, because Mogherini must implement the decisions of the European Council and the Council of Foreign Ministers, and in 2015 all the leaders of the EU countries decided to combat Russian disinformation and directly instructed European structures to do it.”
According to the editor-in-chief of Kremlin Watch, the head of the European External Action Service is trying not to irritate Moscow too much, because she wants to leave some crises solved, for which she needs Russia’s help: “For example, according to my information, she wants to restore Syria by her political legacy after the end of the war there, and for this, as I heard, she wants to take the help of Russia. And so she chose a soft style with Russia, despite all the threat that is contained in the Russian information campaign for European countries.”