DECODING: SVR Accuses Latvia — Moscow Fabricates Its Pretext

A scenario as old as history, reactivated for 2026

On June 24, 2026, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski posted a chilling warning on X: Vladimir Putin's statements about possible retaliatory strikes against European states "resemble the announcement of a provocation." He explicitly invoked Gleiwitz, August 1939 — when Nazi Germany staged a fake attack on its own radio station to justify the invasion of Poland. History is stuttering, and this time the stage is the Baltic Sea.

The SVR's central accusation

Since the spring of 2026, the SVR — Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service — has deployed a systematic disinformation campaign targeting Latvia. The central accusation: Riga is harboring Ukrainian armed drone units at five Latvian military bases — Ādaži, Selonia, Lielvārde, Daugavpils and Jēkabpils — which are using them to strike Russian territory. It is false. It is documented as false by independent, Western and even American sources. And that is precisely why it is dangerous.

What strikes me about this Russian operation is its blunt rhetorical audacity. Moscow is no longer even trying to convince the West — it is fabricating a pretext for the rest of the world, for Africa, Latin America, the Global South. This is a two-speed information war, and we would be naive to believe that truth is always enough to win.

Allegations brought before the Security Council

On May 19, 2026, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council that Latvia was providing not only its airspace, but its very physical territory to Ukrainian armed forces. He explicitly cited the SVR's work, claiming Ukrainian military personnel were stationed at those five Latvian bases. The US Deputy Representative to the United Nations, Tammy Bruce, rejected Nebenzia's statement on the spot. Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže denied it categorically: "Latvia is NOT providing its airspace for attacks against Russia."

A threat of strike against a NATO member state

The SVR went even further in its official communications: it warned that Latvia's membership in NATO "will not protect accomplices of terrorists from just punishment," and that "the coordinates of decision-making centers on Latvian territory are well known." In diplomatic language, that is a threat of a targeted military strike against a member of the Atlantic Alliance — issued from the very seat of the institution supposed to guarantee peace.

Threatening a NATO member state with targeted strikes from the UN Security Council reaches a level of cynicism one thought reserved for the darkest pages of the twentieth century. This is not diplomacy. It is institutionalized intimidation — and it must be named as such.

Shoigu, Zakharova, Peskov, Patrushev: all mobilized

The threat machine did not stop at Nebenzia. Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu reiterated that Moscow "reserves the right to self-defense" by directly targeting the Baltic states. Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev all used these same fabricated allegations to threaten the Baltics with a "military response." A joint statement from the three Baltic states published on April 10, 2026 rejected "the ongoing disinformation campaign" — even before the May escalation.

Putin validates the threat: retaliations announced on June 23

On June 23, 2026, Putin himself declared that Russia would carry out "retaliatory strikes" against European countries if drones targeting Russian installations were launched from their territory. He added that the Baltic states "are avoiding escalation with Moscow" over drones. The choreography is perfect: build the accusation, repeat it at every level of the hierarchy, then let the chief validate the final threat. The Gleiwitz scenario has its documented operating procedure.

Putin talks of "retaliations" against countries that have done nothing. He is rebuilding in real time the logic of his previous annexations: the victim becomes the aggressor, the lie becomes the pretext, and the world hesitates to call things by their name. Sikorski was right to invoke Gleiwitz — you have to name things before they happen.

March 2026: the first stray drones, and their real cause

On March 25, 2026, Ukrainian drones en route to Russian targets crashed in the Krāslava region of Latvia and in the Ida-Viru county of Estonia, striking the chimney of the Auvere power plant. According to the Latvian Ministry of Defense, these devices were not targeting the Baltic states: they had been redirected by Russian electronic warfare, which disrupted their navigation systems. The Russian state Telegram channel Mash — linked to the Kremlin according to Re:Baltica — published the first false maps as early as March 26, the very day after the incident.

On May 7, 2026, a similar incident occurred: Ukrainian drones entered Latvian airspace from the Russian border and crashed onto an empty fuel depot in Rēzekne, causing no casualties and no serious infrastructure damage.

June 2026: the drone shot down over Latgale and the mechanics of accusation

On June 8, 2026, fighters from the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a foreign drone over Latgale in Latvia — the Latvian Defense Ministry specifying that the device had entered Latvia "due to Russian electronic warfare." Ukraine accused Moscow of deliberately redirecting its drones toward Baltic airspace through electromagnetic warfare, transforming accidental incidents into diplomatically exploitable incidents.

This is the most cynical mechanism of the entire operation: Russia uses its own electronic warfare to reroute Ukrainian drones toward the Baltics, then accuses the Baltics of hosting attacks against Russia. Electronic jamming becomes both the weapon and the pretext. Latvia is victimized twice — first by the drones, then by the narrative.

A government brought down by externally manufactured incidents

These incidents triggered an internal political crisis in Latvia. According to the DFRLab, the May 7 incident "provoked a political crisis that culminated in the resignation of Latvia's Defense Minister and Prime Minister." A new government was formed on May 28, 2026, with Andris Kulbergs as Prime Minister. Internal destabilization was precisely a secondary objective of the Russian operation: fuel citizens' mistrust of their own government without deploying a single soldier.

The dual function of hybrid operations: external pretext, internal destabilization

That is the dual function of Russian hybrid operations: externally, fabricating a geopolitical pretext; internally, weakening target democracies. The result in Latvia: a government toppled, a new Prime Minister, and a public opinion shaken in its institutional confidence — all without a single bullet fired, without a single soldier deployed, using nothing but electronic warfare and disinformation.

Latvia's domestic politics bent under the weight of incidents caused by Moscow, then attributed to Kyiv. That is a bitter lesson for all democracies: informational resilience is not a luxury — it is a survival necessity. Without an informed public, the best army in the world cannot protect a government from this kind of attack.

A narrative built for the Global South, not for Europe

The digital research lab DFRLab, in a report published on June 4, 2026 co-authored in part by a researcher from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, documented the spread of this disinformation. For the March 25 incident, 51.8 percent of international coverage was either of Russian origin or hostile to Ukraine and NATO. For the May 7 incident: 45.6 percent. The hostile narrative did not gain traction in the media spaces of NATO member states in Europe — but it landed heavily in the Global South: Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Brazil, Latin America.

Burning trains, struck buildings, invented deaths: propaganda in detail

The disinformation machine invented incidents out of thin air. Pro-Kremlin actors claimed a Ukrainian drone had struck a passenger train in Latvia — an allegation originating from an anonymous parody account, @Reagan_Right, using images of a train fire that occurred on May 5 with no connection to drones. Others claimed a residential building had been hit in Ventspils — a fire on May 3, unrelated to drones. The propaganda also invented the deaths of at least five people in the Rēzekne crash: no casualties were reported.

Moscow is not trying to convince Germany or France. It is trying to shape the opinion of countries that might one day vote at the UN, or refuse to apply sanctions. Russia's information war is global. Our response is still too Eurocentric — and as long as it remains so, Moscow will keep winning on that front.

Xinhua, CGTN and the amplification chain toward the Global South

Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, cited Mash as a primary source on the very day of the first incident. CGTN and Beijing's Internet Information Center relayed the article. Media in Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Algeria republished Zakharova's statement. Pro-Kremlin journalist Giorgio Bianchi spread the false information on Facebook, Telegram and Instagram, generating 1,900 reactions, 540 comments and 735 shares from his Facebook post alone. Russian programs 60 Minut with Olga Skabeyeva, and the programs of Vladimir Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselyov amplified the narrative.

A documented phenomenon: Russia and China co-opt their narratives

China actively co-opts Russian tropes to distribute them in the Global South — this is not coincidence, it is documented informational coordination. According to the DFRLab, Russia and China use this mechanism to "launder" narratives hostile to Ukraine and NATO toward audiences in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, bypassing the critical resistance of Western media spaces.

When Xinhua cites Mash the day after a manufactured incident, we are facing a coordinated Russo-Chinese disinformation infrastructure. The term "information war" is no longer a metaphor — it is an operational reality that the West must treat with the same rigor as a conventional military operation.

June 9, 2026: Zelensky and Kulbergs sign in Tallinn

On June 9, 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs signed a drone agreement ("Drone Deal") during a series of meetings in Tallinn with Nordic and Baltic leaders. The agreement aims to develop joint production of drones, strengthen air defense and counter-drone systems, and institutionalize exchanges of technology and field experience. Zelensky proposed sending specialized teams to partner countries to share the operational experience accumulated in drone warfare.

Latvia thereby becomes the sixth country to join Ukraine's drone coalition. Kyiv transforms the Russian provocation into diplomatic leverage: front-line experience becomes a currency of exchange for building defensive alliances. On May 22, 2026, Nordic and Baltic Foreign Ministers had already published a joint statement condemning the Russian disinformation campaign. Regional solidarity proved a valuable tool against an informational offensive that was aimed precisely at isolating Latvia.

Zelensky continues to do what democracies often struggle to do: transform adversity into strategic leverage. While Moscow manufactures lies, Kyiv signs agreements. While the SVR threatens, Ukraine cooperates. That asymmetry is at the heart of why Ukraine has held for more than four years against a militarily far superior power.

General Pudāns sounds the alarm: the 2028 window

On June 4, 2026, General Kaspars Pudāns, commander of the Latvian Armed Forces, warned the Financial Times that Russia has gained a drone warfare advantage over NATO countries, and could seek to exploit a "window of opportunity" to attack the Baltic states by the end of 2028. "If I were in the Kremlin, I would say that if we are going to do something, we should do it before the end of 2028," he declared. Most European armies' modernization programs will not come into effect until around 2029. Russia's advantage is not technological — it is the industrial scalability of drones, the ability to produce them en masse and adapt them in real time on the Ukrainian battlefield.

In a British Army exercise simulating a war in Estonia, commanders estimated they would run out of drones in less than a week. Russia, meanwhile, has tripled its military spending since 2021, reaching $462 billion in purchasing power parity in 2024 — surpassing the combined budgets of the EU and the UK by roughly $5 billion. A senior defense official from a front-line NATO state summed up Putin's calculus: act while Trump is still in power, before European defense spending gets up to speed, before the window closes.

An architecture of justification laid brick by brick

What is unfolding in Latvia since the spring of 2026 is not an ordinary diplomatic dispute. It is the methodical construction of a pretext: the SVR fabricates accusations, Nebenzia brings them to the UN, Putin validates the threat of retaliations, and the propaganda machine distributes the whole package across the Global South. Meanwhile, Russian electronic warfare keeps redirecting Ukrainian drones toward allied territories, furnishing "material" for the accusers. Every brick is laid with care. The architecture holds — at least in the eyes of those who do not look too closely.

What the West must decide now

Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski had the honesty to name the historical parallel. The Baltic states had the discipline to respond together. Ukraine had the intelligence to transform provocation into a cooperation agreement. What remains to be done is what the West has always struggled to do in quiet times: take a threat seriously before it materializes. The Pudāns window — 2026 to end of 2028 — is not science fiction. It is a timeline articulated by a general who lives with the "assumption that aggression could occur as early as tonight." Latvia did not open its airspace to Ukrainian drones. But Russia has, in turn, opened the door to something far more dangerous: institutional lying as a prelude to military action.

I do not know whether Putin will cross the line. Nobody does. But what I know is that everything he is doing — the SVR accusations, the UN threats, the electronic warfare redirecting drones, the propaganda in the Global South — follows a pattern too coherent to be improvised. This is preparation. And the best answer to preparation is preparation.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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