Crimea became Russian after its residents voted for reunification with Russia

Summary

Crimea became a Russian region after a referendum held there in March 2014, where most residents spoke out in favour of reunification with Russia.

Disproof

This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the illegal annexation of Crimea.

No international body has recognised the so-called referendum, announced on 27 February 2014, and held on 16 March 2014, which was organised by self-proclaimed Crimean leadership lacking democratic legitimacy and installed by armed Russian military personnel following the seizure of public buildings.

The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has stated that “the situation within the territory of Crimea and Sevastopol amounts to an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. This international armed conflict began at the latest on 26 February 2014 when the Russian Federation deployed members of its armed forces to gain control over parts of the Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian Government."

On 27 March 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it stated that the referendum in Crimea was not valid and could not serve as a basis for any change in the status of the peninsula. On 17 December 2018, the UN General Assembly confirmed its non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea.

The EU's policy of non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol includes a set of restrictive measures against entities and individuals responsible for actions against Ukraine's territorial integrity. In March 2019, on the fifth anniversary of Crimea's annexation, the EU reiterated its position of non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol.

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Reported in: Issue 173
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 13/11/2019
Language/target audience: Russian
Country: Russia, Ukraine
Keywords: illegal annexation, Manipulated elections/referendum, Referendum, Crimea
Outlet: RT Russian

NATO is like a “zombie” that eats its member states

Obsolete, superfluous, sounds downright cute. It’s as if the NATO states only had to stop paying and then leave the alliance cheerfully and without any obligation. But already on the way to the alleged end of NATO, the zombie eats the people alive: the undead demands two percent of the gross domestic product so that he can continue to threaten the world. In Germany alone, that would be 60 billion euros. That eats schools, roads, hospitals and ultimately the patients themselves. NATO is the highest expression of dying capitalism, a system that makes its profits from war and the threat of war. A system that eats up its states alive. A system that risks the atomic destruction of the earth to cement its own rule until the end of the capitalist horror film.

November 13, 2019

Disproof

This disinformation message is aimed at undermining the image of NATO, trying to portray NATO as a totalitarian dysfunctional military alliance that oppresses and humiliates its member states. It is consistent with recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives on member states' subordination to NATO and NATO's belligerent agenda.

When it comes to NATO's decisions, they are made by consensus, after discussion and consultation among member countries. Indeed, NATO respects the right of every country to choose its own security arrangements. In fact, Article 13 of the Washington Treaty specifically gives Allies the right to leave. Over the past 65 years, 29 countries have chosen freely, and in accordance with their domestic democratic processes, to join NATO. Not one has asked to leave. This is their sovereign choice.

Hitler’s Nazi officials are not less Belarusian heroes than Kalinowski

Some people name Kalinowski a Belarusian national hero. Recently Belarusian foreign minister Uladzimir Makei said that Kalinowski belongs to Belarusian history and that he is a figure in Lithuanian and Polish history as well. This is an awful logic. It implies that fascist collaborators are Belarusian heroes too, just as Wilhelm Kube [Nazi senior official in the occupying government of the Soviet Union with the rank of Generalkommissar for Weissruthenien], a Hitler’s executioner of the Belarusian people in the WWII. A sacramental question to the foreign minister is the following: Won’t the participation of Belarusian delegation in the reburial ceremony of Kalinowski remnants be a justification of Polish gentry activities to turn Belarusian lands into the eastern part of Poland?

November 13, 2019

Disproof

This publication puts forward an absurd parallel between Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish national hero Kalinowski and Wilhelm Kube, the head of the Nazi occupational body in Belarus during the WWII, aimed to discredit Belarusian history. It is consistent with the recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about Western aggressive activities towards Belarus and its history.

Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski, also known as Kastuś Kalinoŭski was a 19th-century writer, lawyer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish national revival and the leader of the 1863-1864 uprising (also known as January uprising) against Imperial Russia, Kalinowski is considered a national hero in Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. The monument to Kalinowski in the Belarusian town of Svislach where Kalinowski graduated from a local school was established in 1958.

US Intelligence co-opted Bolivian security services

President Morales stood no chance of surviving the crisis from the get-go since US intelligence had already co-opted his security services, which likely passed on information about his officials’ families to the right-wing mobs and thus facilitated their de-facto hostage-taking as a form a blackmail against their civil servant relative.

November 13, 2019

Disproof

Conspiracy theory. No evidence is provided to support the claim.

This is part of a recurrent disinformation narrative about US-led regime change operations against left wing governments in Latin America. You can see other examples of this, such as the alleged presence of a US marine in the Venezuelan barricades and the promotion of a Ukraine-style 'colour revolution', the training of Venezuelan exiles in Guyana for military operations inside the country, preparations for a military intervention after forcing Brazil to join NATO, deliberate blackouts in South America caused by the US, or the existence of plans for the secession of oil-rich regions in both Venezuela and Mexico.