Francois Lenoir/Reuters
Russia planted a recent fake news report about a rape committed by German soldiers in order to discredit NATO’s new eastern force, a top NATO general said Saturday. Czech army general Petr Pavel said in an interview with Reuters that the “fake news” about a rape of a 15-year-old girl in Lithuania was emailed to the speaker of Lithuania’s parliament earlier this week. The report “was not based on real events,” Pavel said, describing it as “fake news” created by the Kremlin. “Russia is not pleased by the deployment of NATO troops closer to its border so it will likely use legal means, such as propaganda and they will try to influence public opinion against the deployments,” he said, warning that more dubious reports are likely to come out in the near future. On the same day Pavel issued his warning, Russian Minister Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lambasted NATO as a “Cold War institution” and blamed the alliance for tensions throughout Europe.