This disinformation message is a classic example of the Russia did not do/you have no evidence approach to the report published by the Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament. The document shows for example that there is Russian cyber intrusion into the UK's critical national infrastructure; and that Russian actors orchestrated phishing attempts against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory during the investigation into the Salisbury attacks. The report also says: "Russia may spread disinformation or seek to influence political events for a wide range of purposes, but all in support of its underlying foreign policy objectives: • direct support of a pro-Russian narrative in relation to particular events (whilst some of the outright falsehoods which are put forward may not be widely believed, they may still succeed in casting doubt on the true account of events (...); • direct support of Russia’s preferred outcome in relation to an overseas election or political issue; and • general poisoning of the political narrative in the West by fomenting political extremism and ‘wedge issues’, and by the ‘astroturfing’ of Western public opinion; and general discrediting of the West." The report also indicates that Russian money has been welcome in the UK and it has had access to the highest levels of UK companies and political figures. Russian intervention in European, and in particular British affairs, is well known and documented. There is compelling evidence that the Russian state was behind Alexander Litvinenko's assassination through poisoning with radioactive polonium on British soil. A British murder investigation pointed to a member of Russia’s Federal Protective Service as the prime suspect. A public enquiry concluded that Litvinenko’s murder was a Russian FSB operation, probably personally approved by President Putin. As for the Skripal poisoning, the British Police have presented a solid chain of evidence, with pictures, connecting the suspects to the locations in the case. Parts of the material have been released to the public. The evidence was sufficient to charge two Russian nationals, Anatoliy Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin with the attack on the Skripals, both Russian military intelligence operatives from the GRU, who travelled to the UK using fake names and documents. Numerous investigations have provided convincing evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum and in elections across Europe and in the US - see more information here, here and here. In early 2018, Twitter admitted that Russian trolls had indeed targeted the Brexit vote during an evidence session with British MPs, who flew to the United States to question representatives from major technology firms as part of their fake news inquiry. Further information came to light later in 2018, when Twitter released data showing that an army of Russian trolls sent thousands of messages with the hashtag #ReasonsToLeaveEU on the day of the Brexit vote. This army, which was linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), constituted approximately 3800 accounts. See similar cases claiming that The West falsely accuses Russia of election meddling, or that Twitter didn’t find any Russian effort to influence Brexit, There is no evidence of Russia’s involvement in the Skripals’ poisoning.
