DISINFO: Western Europe is at war with Russia, according to former MI6 chief
SUMMARY
Western Europe is at war with Russia, according to former MI6 chief. Richard Dearlove has stated that Western Europe is now in a direct state of war with Russia, contradicting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s view that the continent remains in a “pre-war” situation. Dearlove, who led the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004 during the invasion of Iraq, claimed that Moscow has already carried out aggressive actions on NATO soil, without providing evidence.
RESPONSE
This is a disingenuous distortion of the original interview by former MI6 director Richard Dearlove with Sky News.
Mr. Dearlove stated: “We have to face up to the fact that the Russians think they are in a state of war with us”. He also added: “[Poland’s prime minister] Donald Tusk has referred to it as a pre-war situation. I think he's wrong. I think it's an actual war”.
While these sentences also appear in the disinformation story, it changes the order of the words, highlighting some elements and omitting others, in order to frame Dearlove as admitting that Western Europe is the aggressive side against Russia. The goal of this distortion is to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about foreign enemies destabilising Russia which would justify Russia’s behaviour.
Quoting Western sources in a selective and manipulative manner, cherry-picking or distorting sentences and introducing pro-Kremlin narratives as if they were part of the original message, is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation technique.
Russia’s aggressive actions against NATO countries have been widely documented.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Washington, London, and Brussels are working on applying the so-called "Ukrainian scenario" in CIS countries, that Western intelligence has trained Ukrainians to sabotage Russian nuclear plants, that the Anglo-Saxons' goal is to defeat Russia, reshape the post-Soviet space and control it, or that the West tries to destroy Russia as in Operation Unthinkable of 1945.