Russian President Vladimir Putin has nearly completed his purge of independent news media in Russia.  “This is not just a war of information,” says one keen analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.  “It is a war on information.”

Moscow is waging a highly effective information war in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with its “Russia Today” television broadcasts in their national languages, a war that the West must respond with its own efforts, according to Elina Lange-Ionatamishvili, a NATO specialist on counter-propaganda.

Russia unveiled a new initiative to spread Moscow’s message by radio and Internet in 30 different languages, the latest effort in the Kremlin’s intensifying information war with the West.

Last weekend, the paradisiac island of Rhodes, Greece played host to the most recent debates on the budding ‘information war’ between Russia and the United States. The United States has traditionally invested enormous funds in perpetuating its ‘soft power’ abroad, particularly in the former territory of the USSR .