EUvsDisinfo: No Mercy (original title: The Remorseless)< /p>
The more monstrous the crime, the weaker the desire of the Kremlin and its supporters for remorse. Instead of repenting, Kremlin agents continue their eerie dance on the graves of those whom the Russian military machine killed in cold blood.
We witnessed the latest episode of the denial mantra of the Bucha massacre – in spite of all the evidence, including the recent heart-wrenching investigation of “Babel”. Lavrov continued to utter the lies, deceptions and denials that we have become so accustomed to. The Kremlin continues to wage its inhumane disinformation campaign about past atrocities, while seizing on every current event to protect its interest. This trend was clearly manifested in the media coverage of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald J. Trump.
298 souls lost
July 17th marked the sad 10th anniversary of the MH17 tragedy, when a BUK 9M83 surface-to-air missile belonging to the Russian Armed Forces was fired from temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine. The missile shot down the civilian plane and killed all 298 people on board, including 80 children.
In the case of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, as well as other atrocities committed such as those in Bucha and the shelling of the Ohmatdit Children's Hospital. in Kiev, the Kremlin and the Russian authorities strictly follow their cynical scheme, where one lie follows another. First comes denial, then deception and muddying the waters, claims that the tragedy never happened or that it was staged, followed by finger-pointing and attempts to seek scapegoats elsewhere.
Depending on the crime committed, in rare cases the Kremlin's cycle of lies ends with a cynical admission: “Yes, we do”. In these cases, we actually hear the voice of truth from the Kremlin.
Ukrainian link in Trump assassination attempt
The attempted assassination of former US President Donald J. Trump at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, has dominated the news this past week. The accident resulted in the death of two people – including shooter Thomas Crooks – and two injured, with former President Trump also injured. The incident left many searching for answers – but not the Kremlin's propaganda machine, which is busy feeding people lies and conspiracy theories.
According to Kremlin media, including the EU-sanctioned “RT“ and “Pravda“ in Poland and France, the assassination attempt was staged because the “deep state and globalists want to keep Biden in power”. These conspiracy narratives were actively disseminated in many languages besides Russian, including German, French, Spanish, and Polish, to give the disinformation a wide geographic reach. Along with the sites, the pro-Kremlin channels in “Telegram” also participated in the spread of lies.
The Kremlin's information manipulation network pushed fringe conspiracy theories by adding a Ukrainian connection to the poisonous mix. The media built the connection “Trump had announced his intention to stop the conflict in Ukraine by talking to Putin“ and even directly insinuated that Ukraine would win if the assassination was successful. Sanctioned propaganda mouthpieces like “Lenta“ and “RIA“ joined the general chorus and spread speculation about the reasons behind the assassination attempt, suggesting it was related to the war in Ukraine.
Deriving dividends from tragedy
We are witnessing another glaring example of the Kremlin opportunistically extracting dividends from a tragic incident with potential global consequences to advance its own political agenda. The Kremlin has picked up fringe conspiracy theories and given them a global platform, trying to build credibility and increase its following in circles receptive to those theories, hoping that Russian strongholds will in turn take a stronger position. in these communities.
Something more – The Kremlin's attempts to smear Ukraine by implicating it in the assassination attempt on Trump is an old trick from the Kremlin's handbook aimed at undermining popular and political support for Ukraine from the US and other allied countries.
Other topics in this week's review from EUvsDisinfo:
- Another false media narrative from the Kremlin network claims that Romania is waiting for Russia to weaken and will annex Moldova. This misinformation paints Romania as a country with imperialistic ambitions towards Moldova, which has plans to annex it. The reality? Romania was the first nation to recognize Moldova's independence in August 1991 and has maintained relations of cooperation and support ever since. Such baseless claims are nothing more than an attempt to undermine the good relations between Moldova and Romania by fueling unfounded fears of annexation. This is another stroke of this ongoing campaign of Kremlin disinformation against Moldova.
- One of the mouthpieces of the Kremlin and a famous disinformation channel, “Sputnik”, spews manipulations again. In the wild imagination of “Sputnik” Kiev is preparing to send sabotage groups to Belarus. As usual, the propagandists have no evidence to back up their fear-mongering rhetoric and try hard to portray Ukraine as the aggressor. Beyond the fictions of “Sputnik“ we see the reality that Ukraine has no territorial claims to Belarus and maintains a purely defensive stance aimed at deterring future Russian attacks from Belarusian soil. This smear is a blatant attempt to support one of the Kremlin's favorite myths – that Ukraine is an aggressor. At the same time, the unjustified is justified – Russia's continued imperial conquest directed at Ukraine.
- Another disinformation narrative of “Sputnik” from last week states that by fueling the “proxy war” in Ukraine, the West is exhausting its own air defense potential. This is an example of how manipulators connected to the Russian leadership falsely call Russia's war against Ukraine a “proxy war”. They suggest that support for Ukraine is not only useless, but actually weakens the supporters themselves. Let's be clear – this example of disinformation can be seen as a panicked response to the confirmation of the commitment of several NATO countries to strengthen Ukrainian air defense.
EUvsDisinfo/ translation: Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria