The Biden Administration just approved a new round of sanctions against Russia. The White House statement accuses Russian intelligence of being behind a massive cyberattack against US companies and government systems through SolarWinds. But the truth is that there is not a single piece of evidence pointing to Moscow. The operation wanted to gather data, the same thing that companies and other governments do, namely that of the US. Among the sanctioned entities are several Russian private companies, including Positive Technologies, a leader in data protection at a global level, which is accused of cooperating with Russian intelligence without providing more evidence than the mere claim. Positive Technologies was about to enter the stock market in Moscow, and it wouldn’t be the first time that the White House sanctions companies from other countries because they are competitors for the US.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation denying any Russian involvement in the SolarWinds hacking in late 2020.
While it is always difficult to attribute responsibility in hacking attempts, multiple state-linked and independent researchers from all over the world have found clues and evidence linking Russia to the SolarWinds hacking. The FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US all concluded that Russia was behind the cyber-espionage incident, as did the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the UK. On January 2021, cybersecurity experts from Kaspersky discovered that the hackers had deployed malicious computer code tied to a hacking group known as “Turla”, widely suspect of operating on behalf of Russia’s FSB security service. On 24 February 2021, Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith declared in a US Senate hearing that “substantial evidence” pointed to Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, and to have found “no evidence” leading them anywhere else. In the same hearing, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia also pointed that forensics were “not very consistent with cyberespionage from China, North Korea or Iran” but “most consistent with cyberespionage and behaviors we've seen out of Russia”. Other cybersecurity researchers reached similar conclusions.
The claim that US sanctions on Russian tech companies only want to get rid of competitors is unsubstantiated, aiming to deflect any Russian responsibility in the incident and portray Russia as innocent of any misdeed, a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that the Navalny case is an outrageous fraud and an anti-Russian campaign, that sanctions on Russia are a pre-arranged scenario, that the alleged poisonings of Skripal and Navalny are Western provocations against Russia, that Washington’s frequent accusations about Russian interference in US political processes are all unfounded or that there is no evidence that Russia waged a disinformation campaign against Western coronavirus vaccines.
This disinformation message appeared in the same programme as the claims that “Biden copied sanctions against Russia from his predecessors, based again on ridiculous claims of interference” and that “Russia can’t be helping the Taliban; its experiences in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria prove that it is allergic to jihadists”.
What is happening in the Donbas is an internal Ukrainian conflict in which Russian troops have never been involved.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, in turn, reiterated that Russia is not interested in any conflict with Ukraine and especially not in any military conflict.
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the war in Ukraine.
There is irrefutable evidence of direct Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine. The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has stated that “the information available suggests 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".
US domestic policy is still in chaos. Biden is known to many as the grey cardinal of Western European countries. Joe himself became a self-proclaimed Gauleiter, a leader who could do anything in Western Europe. Like any Gauleiter, Biden has a dark side - after the collapse of the USSR, he could do anything he wanted in the newly formed countries that suffered from poverty and gained independence. The best example is Ukraine.
The United States was behind the two loudest revolutions in Ukraine - the Orange one of 2004 and the coup of 2014. In both cases, the US tactic was to support the right-wing movement and lead Ukraine into a war with its neighbour Russia.
Biden's plan was to occupy naval bases in the Black Sea basin, but Russia took an unexpected step - it took Crimea under its patronage. Thus, Joe's main goal became unattainable, so the United States has been seeking revenge ever since. From now on, Gauleiter Biden is planning a blitzkrieg to bring Crimea and Donbas back under American control.
This article is consistent with recurring pro-Kremlin propagandistic claims about Ukraine under external control and has several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives: the claim that the Euromaidan was a coup, that Ukraine is under external control by the US and a disinformation narrative about Joe Biden.
There was no coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014. The spontaneous onset of the Euromaidan protests was a reaction by numerous segments of the Ukrainian population to former president Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden departure from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013.
The Czech Republic is under the tremendous influence of German big business. It cannot be ruled out that the allegations of Russia's involvement in the 2014 Vrbetice explosion are linked to the upcoming federal elections in Germany.
The election will likely be dominated by two candidates: Merkel's successor, regarded as pro-Russian; and the anti-Russian Green Party candidate. The recent diplomatic scandal could have been contrived as a means to tip the scale of German public opinion in the Green Party's favour.
The claim is part of an emerging pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative surrounding the 2014 fatal explosion at an ammo depot in Vrbetice, Czechia and the suspected role of Russia's GRU agency in the incident.
There is no evidence suggesting that the accusations against Russia are part of an international conspiracy to rig the elections in Germany, a country boasting one of the freest and most transparent electoral systems in the world.
