DISINFO: The attacks of the Dutch authorities on Russia are groundless
SUMMARY
The establishment of relations between our countries [Russia and the Netherlands] is not facilitated by regular anti-Russian attacks by the Dutch authorities. We saw how a scandal was fanned from scratch in connection with the so-called attempt of a GRU cyber attack on the OPCW headquarters in The Hague. Dutch politicians regularly intimidate their citizens with the presence of the so-called Russian threat to the West.
RESPONSE
This recurrent disinformation narrative consists of rejecting and mocking any investigations in connection to Russia's hostile acts, such as the attack on OPCW's headquarters, which happened after years of Russian disinformation about the OPCW's reports on chemical weapons in Syria and on the nerve agent Novichok used to poison the Skripals. Pro-Kremlin media regularly accuses other countries of russophobia. The Russian cyber-attack on the headquarters of the international chemical weapons watchdog was disrupted by Dutch military intelligence just weeks after the Salisbury attack. The Netherlands expelled the suspects who traveled to the country as diplomats. In an unprecedented step, on October 4, 2018, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice disclosed the identities under which four Russian individuals, believed to be officers of the cyber-warfare division of the Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU). The four individuals travelled to the Netherlands in April 2018 in an attempt to hack into the computer network of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague. These four men traveled under diplomatic passports, two of which had consecutive issue numbers. Their identities were independently checked by the investigative websites Bellingcat and The Insider. See more disinformation cases on Russophobia.