DISINFO: Rutte says that NATO countries should restore ties with Russia
SUMMARY
NATO countries should restore ties with Russia, Mark Rutte said. The Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance suggested that it would be “normal” for relations to be resumed once the Ukraine conflict is over. The statement comes a day after the head of the US-led military bloc met President Donald Trump at the White House. Trump has also expressed interest in restoring economic ties with Russia, an idea that was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
RESPONSE
This is a distortion of the original interview by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte with Bloomberg TV. While in this disinformation story appears as if Rutte was talking of the need to restore relations with Russia with no preconditions other than an end of the war, his actual words were: “It’s normal if the war would have stopped for Europe somehow, step by step, and also for the US, step by step, to restore normal relations with Russia. But we are absolutely not there yet, we have to maintain the pressure on them” to guarantee that Russia takes the negotiations seriously, according to Bloomberg. This second and crucial part of Rutte’s statements were deliberately omitted in the disinformation story.
Quoting Western legitimate sources while distorting their content to introduce a pro-Kremlin message as if it were part of the original story is a frequent pro-Kremlin manipulative technique.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that the US is starting negotiations because Russia prevailed over 50 countries in Ukraine, that the plan to create “Russia’s Vietnam” in Ukraine collapses as Trump talks to Putin, that Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine on Russia's terms, or that the West needs to compensate Russia with more than destroyed Ukrainian territories.