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CEE media must educate West about Russia says PAP CEO

Surmacz said that CEE countries exchange information and "have no problems identifying Russian propaganda" and appealed to the media in these countries to "communicate and educate our Western partners about what Russian disinformation is about."
Radek Pietruszka/PAP

The president of the Polish Press Agency, Wojciech Surmacz, has said that Central and Eastern European media should be warning Western European countries against Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine.

Speaking during a Tuesday panel discussion on public media at the 31st Economic Forum in Karpacz, southwestern Poland, he said that “as the result of several hundred years of experience… the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) perfectly comprehend Russian disinformation.”

“We feel it, but most of all understand it, which translates into the fact that we have early-warning systems in our DNA, we know when it is approaching, how it works and what it can cause,” Surmacz told the panel.

To provide an example of the effectiveness of Russian disinformation he noted that, in the media and on the public forum, the beginning of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine still dates back to February 2022 when, in truth, the Russian war against Ukraine has continued uninterrupted since February 2014.

“This is the effect of the functioning of the Russian propaganda apparatus. This is what it looks like in the long-term process of using active Russian measures. This affects our psyche and our perception of reality,” said Surmacz.

According to him, among Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine “there is a perfect understanding of what we can do.”

Surmacz said that CEE countries exchange information and “have no problems identifying Russian propaganda” and appealed to the media in these countries to “communicate and educate our Western partners about what Russian disinformation is about.”

At the same time, he pointed out that the Latvian media are already under the Russian influence as Latvian news agency LETA was taken over by a Russian-owned investment fund during the Covid-19 crisis.

The PAP president also said that despite his call for the expulsion of Russian news agency TASS from the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), it was only suspended.

Surmacz said that he is currently submitting a second application for the exclusion of TASS from EANA, which will be preceded by a report verifying lies of the deputy head of TASS in his speech preceding the first vote in May.

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