Lithuania Offers Disinformation Countermeasures Toolkit to Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Lithuania is offering to share with the Philippines the tools and methods it's built up over decades of countering Russian and Chinese "hybrid threats," its foreign minister said during a visit to Manila. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys also said he expects more of his country's cybersecurity and counter-disinformation firms to establish a presence in the Philippines. "There will be more presence from the ones that are dealing with cyber tools, and also that are dealing with countering different propaganda narratives," Budrys told Philstar.com in an exclusive interview on July 23. Budrys noted that several of these firms utilize AI-enabled monitoring systems. Beyond commercial tools, Lithuania is also prepared to share its operational frameworks for security operations centers, cyber legislation, e-governance infrastructure and digital public services. Lithuania is in the highest-level tier, or Tier 1, in the International Telecommunication Union's latest edition of the Global Cybersecurity Index, released in 2024. Meanwhile, the Philippines is under Tier 2 ("advancing"), already a jump from its prior classification of Tier 3 in 2020. Budrys, who said he has spent close to 25 years in the security sector, said a lesson from Lithuania's experience is to concentrate the work in a small number of institutions rather than parcel it out across agencies. "It has to be whole-of-government approach, meaning that everyone is responsible, but you cannot share it around and everyone is doing everything," he said. "Then it will be at the end too many people in the kitchen." Vilnius said he assigned core counter-hybrid tasks to defense and strategic communications agencies, while leaning heavily on civil society — which Budrys called the "highest added value" component of Lithuania's security apparatus. He highlighted Lithuania's volunteer online networks, organized as non-governmental organizations, that track and debunk pro-Kremlin narrative operations. "We were fighting trolls with 'elves,'" Budrys said. Lithuania has mapped how responsibilities are divided among Russian state institutions, state media, and state-enabled actors — including organized crime — and is willing to share that intelligence, Vilnius' top diplomat said. Budrys noted that Lithuania is similarly targeted by China. During his trip to Manila, Budrys also met with the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and denounced China's harassment of Philippine vessels as a breach of international law. The Lithuanian minister told Philstar.com that Lithuania was looking to share maritime security technologies refined during the war in Ukraine with the PCG. READ: Lithuania eyes sharing Ukraine-tested maritime tech with PCG