DISINFO: The NYT article on contacts between Catalan and Russian figures attempts to prevent EU-Russia rapprochement
SUMMARY
The supposed Russian interference in international politics is again in the headlines. A New York Times article claims that Josep Lluis Alay, top advisor to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, was in Moscow in 2019. This information aims, as always, to keep Russia as a target, a trend that Spain follows since 2014 under the influence of the Polish, Lithuanian or Estonian far-right. There is a clear strategy to not foment the normalisation of relations between the EU and Russia, which would make the Europeans less dependent on the US. Therefore, Atlantic policy wants to undermine the attempts of rapprochement despite the need for both actors to cooperate in multiple sectors.
RESPONSE
This disinformation story is a reaction to the publication of a New York Times article about the connections between top Catalonian pro-independence figures and Russian officials.
The travels of Carles Puigdemont’s advisor Josep Lluis Alay to Moscow in 2019 are not a claim of The New York Times, as this disinformation article affirms, but were acknowledged by Puigdemont and by Alay himself, who also admitted having had contacts with Russian politicians “as part of regular outreach to foreign officials and journalists”.
There is massive evidence proving Russia’s interference in international events, such as electoral processes and voting in the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. Regarding Catalonia, both Spanish journalist David Alandete and researcher and associate professor at Georgetown University Javier Lesaca have demonstrated that Russian state outlets and bots tried to influence the pro-independence referendum in October 2017.
The claim that the NYT article is part of an ongoing effort to target Russia and prevent a rapprochement with the EU is not backed by any evidence and only aims to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Russia as an innocent victim.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that the US never presented evidence of Russia’s involvement in election interference or cyberattacks, that the Navalny incident is a US plot to disrupt Nord Stream 2, or that the ‘highly likely’ argument is used again to spread lies about Russia.