Disinfo: The OPCW is by no means a trusted organisation

Summary

The OPCW is by no means a trusted organisation. Navalny’s case was handed over by the German side to the OPCW, an organisation without a good reputation… Years earlier, the same organisation investigated the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria. Then the OPCW did not work in the best way, especially in the case of “White Helmets”. The “White Helmets” were engaged in blatant falsification, filming deliberately biased (if not false) videos about the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. And if the case of Navalny is investigated by the OPCW in the same way as the activities of these very “White Helmets”, then there will be no special confidence in the conclusions of this organisation either.

Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, also to discredit the OPCW, an independent inter-governmental international organisation with 193 member states - including Russia. Disinformation claim also advances a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the White Helmets. Allegations in the pro-Kremlin media of "staged" chemical attacks are a part of the ongoing campaign by Syria and Russia to smear the White Helmets as terrorists and war criminals. However, available evidence has yet to link a single chemical attack to any other party than the Assad regime. Pro-Kremlin outlets began portraying the OPCW as a pawn in Western geopolitical designs around mid-2018, when the organisation was being granted new powers to assign blame for chemical attacks, especially in the Syrian Douma. In a joint statement in 2018, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America called for an end to the unacceptable Russian defamation of the OPCW. For more disinformation cases attempting to discredit the OPCW, see here.

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ru.armeniasputnik.am (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 213
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 10/09/2020
  • Outlet language(s) Russian
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: Syria, Germany
  • Keywords: OPCW, White Helmets, Alexei Navalny, Chemical weapons/attack
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Disinfo: The Navalny Affair is undoubtedly a false-flag provocation to foment hostiliy against Moscow

As with the alleged assassination attempt on MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal, the latest incident involving Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is undoubtedly a false-flag provocation to foment Western sanctions and hostility against Moscow.

Sep 09, 2020
Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and Russophobia. Alexey Navalny fell ill during a flight and his plane and was initially hopitalised in Omsk. Since then he has been transferred to Berlin and is receiving treatment at Berlin's Charite Hospital. The German federal government said that toxicological tests provided “unequivocal evidence of a chemical nerve agent of the Novichok group” in the blood samples of Alexei Navalny. The European Union condemned poisoning of Alexei Navalny in the strongest possible terms. The use of multiple and simultaneous versions about an event involving questionable actions by the Russian government or its allies, in order to confound citizens about the actual truth, is a recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation strategy, already seen in the cases of the MH17 downing, the illegal annexation of Crimea, the murder attempt against Sergei and Yulia Skripal or chemical attacks in Syria. Read similar cases claiming that the US hopes that the Navalny case will lead to the cancellation of Nord Stream 2, that the West will falsely accuse Russia of poisoning Navalny, as with Skripal and Litvinenko and that the West has an interest in the death of Navalny to launch a new wave of sanctions against Russia.

Disinfo: Trying to catch up with Russia, the West lost another round in fight against pandemic

When Russian specialists presented the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, Western politicians attacked them with criticism. They accused Russia of being too hasty, pushing their own pharmaceutical companies along the way. This led to an unexpected result. Contrary to criticism and ostentatious scepticism, the vaccine has shown good results. This cannot be said about the developments of Western scientists. The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, from which the US has already pre-ordered the vaccine, was forced to stop testing its drug. One of the test participants developed a “potentially unexplained” illness, the company said.

Sep 09, 2020
Disproof

The recently developed pro-Kremlin narrative about Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V. The article referred to "The Lancet" magazine, where the results of tests of the Russian vaccine were published. Russian authors of the article in "The Lancet" wrote about phase 1/2 non-randomised studies at hospitals in Russia, and claimed that "the heterologous vaccine based on rAd26-S and rAd5-S is safe, well tolerated, and does not cause serious adverse events in healthy adult volunteers. The vaccine is highly immunogenic and induces strong humoral and cellular immune responses in 100% of healthy adult volunteers." However, at the same time, the other article in "The Lancet" about the Russian vaccine said that even after publication of the results of phase 1/2, it is not enough for approving the vaccine on a large scale.

"For regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency, however, data on immune response alone would not generally be an adequate basis for approving a vaccine. Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London (London, UK), explains that 'immune response might not be directly proportional to the degree of protection—you can only find this out in large-scale trials'," writes "The Lancet".

Regarding AstraZeneca, the company said it voluntarily paused trials to allow an independent committee to review safety data and it was working to expedite the review to minimise any potential impact on the trial timeline. "This is a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials," the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters. At the moment, researchers are testing 37 vaccines in clinical trials on humans, and at least 91 preclinical vaccines are under active investigation in animals.

Disinfo: Belarus protests are managed by an external factor 

The protests are under the control of Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Lithuania and the United States. If it was not for the external factor, which is expressed in the management of protests, there would be no provocative street actions in Belarus.

Sep 09, 2020
Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Belarus and its protest painting them as revolution orchestrated by other countries including the West. The protests in Belarus erupted to contest the results of the presidential election on the 9th of August, which are considered fraudulent by a large part of Belarusian society. The European Union has also stated that the elections were neither free nor fair. See similar cases claiming that the protests in Belarus are a colour revolution conducted according to a Maidan scenario and that the West wants to prepare Maidan in Belarus. Articles describing the attempts to link the protests in Belarus with Poland and Lithuania can be found here and here.