DISINFO: Russia faces an aggressive policy aimed weakening and controlling it
SUMMARY
A targeted information campaign is being waged against Russia with categorical and unfounded accusations on a number of issues. Moreover, even all sorts of absurd and anecdotal conspiracy theories are being used. There are, for example, attempts to question Russia’s recent achievements in the field of medicine, in the fight against coronavirus.
Russia is facing the so-called policy of containment. It is facing a consistent and aggressive policy aimed at disrupting the country's development and creating problems around it. This is being done to "ultimately weaken Russia and put it under external control," as is already happening in some countries in the post-Soviet space, stated Putin.
RESPONSE
Disinformation framing Russia as the ultimate target of international events, based on several recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Russia being encircled and an information war being waged against it.
While aware of pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns, the West is trying to keep open channels of communications and cooperation with Russia. For instance, NATO as the Western organisation created cooperation bodies – the Permanent Joint Council and the NATO-Russia Council – to embody its relationship with Russia. It also invited Russia to cooperate on missile defence. The Warsaw Summit Communique 2016 describes NATO's official policy towards Russia: "The Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia. But we cannot, and will not, compromise on the principles on which our Alliance and security in Europe and North America rest."
The EU and its member states have maintained a clear policy of reaching out to Russian society and youth, mainly through the Erasmus+ student exchange programme and other people to people contacts, in line with five guiding principles of relations with Russia.
See similar disinformation claims that the EU wants to make Russia a semi-colony to dictate its foregn and domestic policy; that NATO and the EU want to contain and destabilise Russia through Navalny and the “opposition”; that the West is hysterical about interfering in Russia through the Navalny case; that the US wants to meddle in Russian internal affairs; and that the West collectively develops a hostile attitude towards Russia.