Disinfo: Crimea returned to Russia after a popular referendum

This case is part of the Kremlin's recurring disinformation campaign about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Europe is not "catastrophically lacking gas" - on the contrary, there is enough natural gas supply that prices in Europe have been going down this year. This is because the continent has been flooded with liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a number of suppliers since fall 2018, including the United States. A mild winter in Asia has driven gas prices to a three-year-low level and caused LNG shipments to be redirected to Europe, pushing down the prices. As Polygraph explains, energy experts say LNG has allowed natural gas to become a global commodity that can easily move from one continent to another depending on demand, similar to the way oil is traded. Moreover, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will not import any new Russian gas to Europe; it will simply divert Gazprom’s current transit through the Ukrainian route to Nord Stream 2. Indeed, about 40 percent of Gazprom's transmission capacity to Europe is not utilized - Gazprom's currently unused export capacity to the EU is almost 100 bcm, which contradicts the claim that constructing a new 55-bcm pipeline is necessary to increase gas imports to the EU. More background is available here. For more disinformation cases about Nord Stream 2, see here.

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative that Western sanctions against Russia are unproductive and unjust. Claims that the sanctions are ineffective are not backed by evidence. In reality, most research supports the view that sanctions, imposed on Russia by the US and EU following the annexation of Crimea and Russian meddling in the US election, have worked as planned, noting the drag they have imposed on Russia’s general economic development since 2014: "This adverse effect most likely operates by depressing both foreign trade and foreign capital flows into Russia. Russia’s own counter-sanctions have also had a clear negative effect on the welfare of the average Russian household." The false narrative about sanctions is often backed by false statistics. For example, the alleged economic growth of two percent does not withstand scrutiny. In 2018, the inflation rate went up and the rouble depreciated 20% against the dollar. The sanctions are not an "anti-Russian policy" but were introduced after Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and the downing of the Malaysian passenger plane MH17. The latest decision on a six-month extension of EU sanctions against Russian was taken on the 12th of September 2019, lasting until March 2020. Further reading on the Russian narrative about ineffective Western sanctions has been published by StopFake. Similar cases on ineffective sanctions can be consulted here, here and here.