DISINFO: In 2021, Russia will remain the perfect scapegoat
SUMMARY
As in 2020, accusing the Russians is going to be a leitmotiv in 2021. In his annual press conference, president Putin said that US politics turned Russia into a problem when it really isn’t one. We are seeing how they continued until the very last day with claims of an eventual Russian interference of which there is no trace.
NATO wants to generate tensions with Russia by accusing it of being a threat. Russia remains the old Soviet enemy in Washington’s mindset, and it is a comfortable enemy because, unlike terrorism, it has clear borders. When you have any problem you can always blame the Russians for it. This is the perfect excuse to maintain sanctions, to continue promoting NATO policies in Russia’s borders and to have a clear enemy.
RESPONSE
This is a mix of several recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Russia as a victim of the West and about Russian innocence of any misdeed.
It is false that US policies turned Russia into a problem, that NATO wants to purposefully generate tensions with Russia or that the West tries to portray it as an enemy. Tensions with Russia heightened after it occupied Crimea and orchestrated a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, and interfered in the US elections as well as in other electoral processes in the years afterwards. Contrary to the claim, there is massive evidence of Russian interference in the US elections both in 2016 and in 2020. Sanctions were imposed on Russia for all these reasons.
See other examples of these disinformation narratives about Russia as a victim of the West, such as allegations about the supposed anti-Russian bias of international institutions - be it the OPCW, the World Anti-Doping Agency or the United Nations - which always falsely accuse Russia; the alleged Russophobia of the EU; the affirmation that it is NATO and not the Kremlin who is involved in the Donbas conflict; denials that Russia had any role in the poisoning of Sergey Skripal or the downing of MH17; or claims that neither the US Intelligence Committee report nor the Mueller report found any evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, that there is no proof that Russia tried to influence the Brexit referendum, that “absurd” accusations against Russia are an attempt to demonise it, that for the West Russia is an enemy that must be surrounded with military bases.