DISINFO: Anti-Russian actors using neo-Nazis in Kyiv may be involved in Crocus attack
SUMMARY
The [Crocus attack] atrocities may be just a link in a whole series of attempts carried out by those who have been fighting our country since 2014 at the hands of the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv. Nazis, as it is known, have never shied away from using the dirtiest and inhumane means to achieve their goals.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative depicting Ukraine as a terrorist and Nazi regime. The claim was made in connection with the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow. By trying to link the Crocus terrorist attack to Ukraine, pro-Kremlin media are trying to stoke support and gain legitimacy for its ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Kyiv strongly denied any involvement in the assault on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, and the Islamic State group have claimed responsibility.
US officials have intelligence that the Islamic State group's Afghan affiliate IS-Khorasan is responsible for the Moscow attack. “ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
The US was legally obliged to warn Moscow earlier this month of a possible attack in Russia aimed at large gatherings before issuing a public advisory to citizens in the country. As explained by ABC news.
"The United States shared those advance intelligence indications under a tenet of the U.S. intelligence community called the “duty to warn," which obliges U.S. intelligence officials to lean toward sharing knowledge of a dire threat if conditions allow. That holds whether the targets are allies, adversaries or somewhere in between".
The alert was dismissed as "provocative", "blackmail" and an "attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country" by Putin. He said: “I’ll remind you of recent, let’s say directly, provocative statements of certain official Western structures about potential terror attacks in Russia. All of this looks like obvious blackmail and an attempt to intimidate, destabilise our country”.
Finally, the myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been the cornerstone of Russian disinformation about the country since the very beginning of the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, when it was used to discredit the pro-European popular uprising in Kyiv and, subsequently, the broader pro-Western shift in Ukraine's foreign policy. It has been widely addressed here.
Learn more about the reasons behind the Kremlin's obsession with framing Ukraine as a Nazi state in the EUvsDisinfo analysis titled "Why does Putin portray himself as the tamer of neo-Nazism".
See other similar cases: Ukraine promotes Nazism because it oppresses Russians; The Kyiv regime is a global terrorist threat; The West created an anti-Russian and neo-Nazi Ukraine; Kyiv uses the same methods as ISIS to recruit children; Ukraine’s terrorist regime attacked the Crimean Bridge with help from US and British intelligence services.