DISINFO: Fakes about Russia: virtual attacks on Western states, poison attacks, and intentional plane crashes
SUMMARY
Virtual attacks on Western states, alleged poison attacks, intentionally caused airplane disasters – these are all fakes about Russia.
Just like fake news about alleged quotations of the Russian president, other fake news also develop a treacherous life of their own, be it about alleged virtual Russian attacks on Western states, alleged poison attacks or alleged intentional airplane disasters.
RESPONSE
A recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about Western Russophobia and belligerent agenda against Russia. Virtual Russian attacks on Western states, poison attacks and airplane disaster are not fake news about Russia.
The Russian cyberattacks, in this context, are connected with the hacking on the German Bundestag in 2015. The German domestic intelligence agency said Russia was behind a series of attacks on German state computer systems, including the German parliament in 2015. According to the reports from the German media, the federal prosecutor's office has issued an international arrest warrant against Dmitri Badin, a hacker reportedly working for the Russian military intelligence service, in relation to the cyber attack.
Concerning the poisoning accusations, in case of Yuliya and Sergey Skripal, Moscow's involvement in the poisoning has been proven via a thorough investigation. The British police have presented a solid chain of evidence on the Skripal case, with pictures, connecting the suspects to the locations in the case. Parts of the material have been released to the public. The evidence was sufficient to charge two Russian nationals, Anatoliy Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin with the attack on the Skripals, both Russian military intelligence operatives from the GRU, who travelled to the UK using fake names and documents.
As for Russian opposition figure Aleksey Navalny, he fell ill during a flight and was transferred to Berlin's Charité Hospital in August 2020. The German federal government said that toxicological tests provided “unequivocal evidence of a chemical nerve agent of the Novichok group” in Navalny's blood samples. The European Union condemned the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny in the strongest possible terms.
The airplane disaster here refers to the recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine. The results of the investigation of the Joint Investigation Team are clear: flight MH17 was shot down by a missile from the 9M38 series, which was launched by the BUK TELAR system. The system was transported from the Russian Federation to an agricultural field near the city of Pervomaiskiy in Eastern Ukraine, from where the rocket was launched. After firing, the system, with one missing missile, returned to the Russian Federation. On 24 May 2018, JIT announced in its conclusion that the Buk belongs to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces in Kursk, Russian Federation. The public hearing on the incident started on 9 March 2020 in the Netherlands. Read more about the investigation here.
See related disinformation cases alleging that Russophobic Western media push narrative of Putin’s role in Navalny poisoning, about alleged missing evidence of Russian hacking of the Bundestag or of Russian poisoning of Skripal, and that The West punishes Russia for having chosen Putin as a president again.