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Disinfo: Russia’s UN delegation proves OPCW doctored own report on Douma incident

Summary

OPCW inspector-turned-whistleblower Ian Henderson told the UN Security Council on 20 January that the OPCW’s report on the alleged 2018 chemical attack in Douma had been sanitised of any dissenting “findings, facts, information, data or analysis.”

Besides listening to Henderson’s testimony, the UNSC was addressed by Russia’s OPCW representative, Alexander Shulgin, and the chief of an NGO that had previously interviewed over 300 residents of Douma, shattering the official Western narrative.

Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives attacking the independence and integrity of the OPCW; lending credence to the claim that the 2018 Douma attack was staged; and absolving the Syrian regime of responsibility for chemical attacks in general.

Henderson's testimony was based on an already-debunked engineering assessment leaked in May 2019, which questioned the method by which a set of chlorine cylinders had been deployed at the site of the Douma incident. See our disproof of this claim, plus Bellingcat's exhaustive debunking of this and other Douma-related disinformation narratives here, here, and here.

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  • Reported in: Issue 182
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 21/01/2020
  • Language/target audience: English
  • Country: Russia, Syria
  • Keywords: United Nations, false flag, Douma, OPCW, Chemical weapons/attack, Syrian War
  • Outlet: RT (rt.com), Sputnik News, Sputnik Latvia, Sputnik Poland, Sputnik Mundo, Pervyy Kanal, Ren TV, Baltnews
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Warsaw rewriting WWII history for propaganda purposes

Polish officials are minimising the Soviet Union’s role in liberating Poland from the Nazis, in an attempt to rewrite the history of the Second World War for propaganda purposes.

In an op-ed, Polish PM Morawiecki dubbed the Soviet Union a “facilitator” of the Nazi regime, glossing over the tens of millions of Soviet lives sacrificed in a war to topple fascism. Morawiecki also claimed that the Red Army “did not ‘liberate’ Warsaw, as the Russian authorities are now claiming.

600,000 Soviet soldiers died in the liberation of Poland.

January 27, 2020
Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative distorting the events of the Second World War.

In his op-ed, Morawiecki rightly notes that "liberation of Warsaw" is an overgenerous term, particularly in the context of Soviet actions before, during, and after the Second World War.

CIA reveals that the ‘Hero of Ukraine’ Stepan Bandera worked for Hitler

In 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko granted posthumously to Stepan Bandera the highest distinction of the country, the title of ‘Hero of Ukraine” for “having fought for an independent Ukrainian State”. However, the CIA recently published documents which prove that Bandera was indeed an agent for Hitler. In a report titled Stepan Bandera and the 1941 ‘Ukraine State'”, US intelligence call Bandera “a Ukrainian fascist and Hitler’s professional agent” whose codename was Consul 2.

January 27, 2020
Disproof

The claim that the CIA revealed that Stepan Bandera was Hitler’s agent is false. The mentioned CIA document is a  translation of an article published in the journal of the Russian Social-Democratic party in exile, the Sotstialistichaskiy Vestnik publication in June-July 1951 and reviewed by the US intelligence’s foreign languages monitoring service. The allegations against Bandera were made by the author of the article, Petro Yarovyy, who was echoing the official accusations of the USSR, and not by the CIA. Besides, the original document includes a standard legend affirming that its content is unevaluated information.

This is a part of a recurrent Russian narrative to deny Ukraine’s identity and Ukrainian nationalism by equating them to Nazism. You can see other examples, such as the allegations that the Ukrainian project is nothing but its Nazi ideology, derived from a Western-sponsored coup carried out by Ukrainian fascists (also known as Neo-Banderas), using Russophobia in Ukraine and other countries to encircle Russia, and that this led to Ukraine’s division in three parts including Banderastan.

Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine are infected by Russophobia

The solidarity of the Poles and of the Baltic States as well as the position of Ukraine explains their attitude towards history. All of these states are infected by Russophobia.

January 26, 2020
Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Russophobia in the Baltic States, Poland and in Ukraine.

“Russophobia” is a manipulative defensive line, often used by Russian propaganda to reduce any criticism of the Russian state to an irrational intolerance towards the Russian people. Outlets such as RT, Sputnik and Russian national state television use the term to portray almost any foreign criticism of the Kremlin's policies.

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Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.