DISINFO: Expulsion of GRU officers from the Netherlands is a staged performance and a provocation
SUMMARY
The April expulsion of four alleged GRU officers from the Netherlands is “a staged performance”, “incredible stupidity” and “pure provocation” and it is linked to the release by Russia of new information about the Buk missile that hit the MH17 flight.
RESPONSE
Dutch officials gave unprecedented details as they outlined the alleged Russian operation at a joint Dutch-UK government news conference in The Hague. The head of Dutch counterintelligence, Maj. Gen. Onno Eichelsheim, named the four alleged Russian officers as Aleksei Morenets, Evgenii Serebriakov, Oleg Sotnikov and Alexey Minin. The four alleged agents planned to travel next to an OPCW-accredited Swiss laboratory in Spiez, Bern, that does research into chemical weapons, Eichelsheim said. They had bought train tickets for April 17 from the Dutch city of Utrecht to Switzerland, he said, but did not get there because their operation was disrupted.Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/04/europe/netherlands-russia-gru-intl/index.html