Disinfo: It is unreasonable to accuse Russia of cyberattacks against the US

Summary

The United States should stop accusing either Russian hackers or the Russian government of cyberattacks. This is unreasonable. Additionally, no proof has ever been presented to support these accusations.

Disproof

A recurring pro-Kremlin propaganda narrative about ubiquitous Russophobia and a belligerent agenda against Russia.

There is substantial evidence that cyber-attacks targeting companies and governments between Europe and the US originated from Russia and are also linked to the Russian government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is known to have admitted that ‘patriotic hackers’ might target election campaigns abroad. Cyberattacks linked to Russian military intelligence have targeted companies researching Covid-19 drugs and vaccines.

Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election was also established by US intelligence agencies, and at least two units within the Russian GRU were accused of targeting both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns ahead of the 2020 US Presidential election. The US Department of Justice indicted in 2017 two FSB officials and their Russian cybercriminal conspirators on computer hacking and conspiracy charges.

More recently in 2020/2021, there have been two cases in the US, with Solarwinds and with the Colonial pipeline in which there is evidence that Russian hackers were behind the cyber attack operations.

In Europe, Dutch law-enforcement agents caught red-handed Russian military intelligence operatives involved in a hacking operation against the OPCW. The UK has provided convincing evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. Germany in 2015 issued an international arrest warrant against Dmitri Badin, a hacker working for the Russian military intelligence service.

Check out our article regarding GRU-linked cyber attacks, and our analysis: The “Russophobia” Myth: Appealing to the Lowest Feelings.

Read similar cases claiming that accusations about Russian-sponsored hacker attacks aim to discredit Sputnik V, and that Brussels uses Russophobia as a uniting idea to prevent the EU's collapse, or that it is speculation to say that cyberattacks originated in Russia, or that Russia is not and will never be implicated in cybercrimes, or that Russian secret services have never been involved in cyber-attacks.

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sputniknews.gr (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 249
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 15/06/2021
  • Article language(s) Greek
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: Russia, US
  • Keywords: Cyber, Russophobia, Anti-Russian
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Disinfo: The US is funding a colour revolution in Mexico

The government of Mexico sent a diplomatic note to the United States after US agencies funded a civil organisation whose leader is the leading figure behind the electoral coalition of the opposition block. From 2018 to 2020, the organisation Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), founded by Mexican businessman Claudio X. González, received a total of 2.34 million dollars from US agencies such as USAID and NED, according to info available in their own database, through which the US government funds projects of development and the promotion of “democracy” abroad.

Claudio X. González is also the main orchestrator of the opposition coalition conformed by parties PRI, PAN and PRD for the midterm election of 2021 through the initiative Sí por México. The businessman has acknowledged that the main goal of this opposition alliance is to take the majority away from ruling party MORENA in the Chamber of Deputies, in order to control the budget prior to the presidential election of 2024.

Jun 14, 2021
Disproof

The narrative about a US-funded colour revolution in Mexico, explicitly stated through the use of the OTPOR fist symbol in minute 01:30 of the video, is misleading. In early June 2021, the government of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador officially protested the funding by US agencies of Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity - one of the organisations that it has described as “opposition groups”, and called it “an act of interventionism that violates [Mexico’s] sovereignty”. This disinformation video goes a step forward by deliberately mixing some facts in order to portray the US as being involved in an attempt to influence Mexican politics.

Although it is true that MCCI received funds from USAID and the NED, this funding started in January 2018, while Andrés Manuel López Obrador didn’t win the presidential election until July of that year. This disinformation narrative omits the fact that MCCI was also very critical of corruption during the tenure of López Obrador’s predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, and even before: while the organisation wasn’t funded until 2015, it also addressed high-profile corruption cases that took place in earlier years, such as the tenure of Felipe Calderón.

Disinfo: The coup d'état of Maidan caused a referendum that united Crimea with Russia

Crimea was attached to Russia in 2014, following a referendum. The self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are controlled by rebels from eastern Ukraine who refuse to recognise the authorities resulting from the coup d'état of Maidan.

Jun 14, 2021
Disproof

Recurrent narrative about 2014 events in Ukraine, the Euromaidan protests and the illegal annexation of Crimea.

No international body recognises the so-called referendum in Crimea, not the UN, nor the EU.

Disinfo: Western big pharma is waging a disinformation campaign against Sputnik V

A disinformation campaign against the Sputnik V vaccine was ordered by the Western pharmaceutical transnational big pharma, which include 30 of the world's leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, whose headquarters are primarily in the United States and Western European countries: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, all of which have released their own COVID-19 vaccines.

From the beginning, there was a campaign to undermine confidence in the great achievement of Russian scientists, in the efficacy of the vaccine. There are attacks against Sputnik V mainly in the Anglo-Saxon press; it is a kind of octopus that combines the interests of the big pharma and various political actors who are opposed to Russia. The campaign aims to reduce the vaccination rate in Russia itself.

Since the end of last year, Russian authorities have repeatedly announced attempts by Western countries to discredit Sputnik V. In December, the official representative of the Russian Defence Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said that Moscow knows in detail what funds and what resources have been launched from abroad to discredit the national vaccine in the world and in Russia. In March, a Sputnik source in the Kremlin reported that the United States and its allies, through controlled non-governmental organizations, were preparing for a large-scale disinformation campaign.

Jun 14, 2021
Disproof

Recurring disinformation narrative about an ongoing campaign of the West to discredit the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and the promotion of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. In this case, this disinformation message aims to cover for the exceptionally low rates of immunisation in Russia (where on early June 2021 only 9 percent of its adult population had received the vaccine despite it being free and available for all age ranges) and for lagging behind the West in its vaccination drive.

Claims about Western smear campaigns against the Russian Sputnik V vaccine are a regular occurrence in pro-Kremlin media, but they are not supported by factual evidence. Early remarks about Sputnik V was motivated by widespread concerns that the approval was premature, since, at the time, the vaccine had not even started phase III trials, nor had any results on the earlier stage trials been published. The WHO expressed concerns about the preternatural registration of vaccine. After the results of phase I and II trials were published in The Lancet in September 2020, a group of international experts analysed them and expressed concerns about statistical anomalies. The same happened after the publication of the results of phase III, whose data discrepancies were again publicly highlighted by scientists.