Disinfo: To contain and intimidate Russia, the West came up with a new Skripal-like Khangoshvili murder story

Summary

The story of murdered Chechen insurgent Zelimkhan Khangoshvili is strikingly similar to the Skripal case. In both cases Western media started their information campaigns only after some time: a week after the poisoning in the Skripal case and four months following Khangoshvili’s murder. The thing is in summer 2019 the West was seemingly interested in improving relations with Russia, so anti-Russian activists who started speaking about “Kremlin’s arm” and “mayhem” created by Russian security bodies in Europe, suddenly shut up for some time. In both cases, no conclusive proofs of Russian implication have been presented. By all accounts, in both cases, there was a political decision to find a good reason to wage an information war against growing Russia. On the eve of Salisbury poisoning, Vladimir Putin demonstrated Russian brand-new hypersonic weapon which devalued the American anti-missile system and NATO infrastructure and made Russia the only country totally free from US’s military coercion. The year of 2019 has also been successful for Moscow, Russia does very well at the international stage. We are observing Russian negotiations about deeper integration with Belarus, its interim victory in Moldova, and Uzbekistan’s plans to enter the Eurasian Economic Union. In order to contain Russia and to make its position at the Normandy summit softer, Russia is being intimidated by Khangoshvili’s murder as a new Skripal case. It will not work though, and the Skripal case proved just that. Russia will be named a threat to the whole mankind again but talks with it will continue anyway.

Disproof

This is a mix of conspiracies suggesting Western Russophobia and coordinated Western media campaign against Russia in Skripal and Khangoshvili cases. The publication groundlessly presents two cases as Western provocations to punish Russia for its alleged successes in the military and foreign policy spheres. It is reported that Germany’s chief public prosecutor suspects Russian intelligence agencies to be behind the killing of a former Chechen insurgent Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin and plans to take over investigations into the case. The assassin who shot Khangoshvili on 23 August 2019 was arrested by German police. He had travelled to Germany on a Russian passport issued in the name of Vadim Sokolov, but the document's authenticity is questioned. In the case of the Skripal poisoning, the pro-Kremlin disinformation machine has pursued frenetic damage control since news of the attack first broke, churning out all manner of denials, fabrications, and feverish conspiracy theories to obscure Russia’s responsibility for the poisoning, cast doubt on the findings of the British investigation, and find a scapegoat (or fifty) to blame for the attack, our past analysis Conspiracy Mania Marks One-Year Anniversary of the Skripal Poisoning explains more. Our past analysis explains that the “Russophobia” myth comes as an explanation of almost any foreign criticism of Kremlin policies in pro-Kremlin media. Read also our earlier disinformation cases alleging that the West wages information war against Russia and Belarus and that Theresa May was probably behind the poisoning of Skripals, to compensate for Brexit negotiations failure.

publication/media

  • Reported in: Issue 176
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 06/12/2019
  • Outlet language(s) Russian
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: UK, Germany
  • Keywords: Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, Union State of Belarus and Russia, Sergei Skripal, Eurasian economic union, West, Military, Anti-Russian, Conspiracy theory, Vladimir Putin, NATO, Information war
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Disproof

Conspiracy theory, without any evidence provided to support the claims. NATO is a mutual defence alliance of democratic states aiming to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means. It doesn’t receive orders from global elites, and decisions are taken by consensus among member states. White supremacism doesn’t play any role in the Atlantic Alliance. All its interventions, such as Kosovo, Afghanistan or Libya, were related to international security challenges, not economic interests. This is part of a recurrent Russian narrative to portray NATO as an aggressive organisation, a US puppet and a tool of Washington’s imperial ambitions with no real substance nor justification to exist. You can see other examples of disinformation against the Atlantic Alliance, such as its obsolescence and its cannibalistic character, its unjustified anti-Russian stance as the only unifying force among its members, its fascistic tendencies or the massive casualties of its bombing campaign against Serbia.

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Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative, portraying NATO as a threat to global peace because it has an aggressive agenda. NATO is a defensive alliance, whose purpose is to protect its member states. Its exercises and military deployments are not directed against Russia or any other country. The claim that NATO is encircling or threatening Russia is one of the myths about this organization. NATO is regularly updating the military requirements for civilian infrastructure, at a time when there are increased challenges to security. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and amid emerging security challenges in the Middle East and North Africa in 2014, NATO leaders at the Wales Summit adopted the Readiness Action Plan, a comprehensive package of enhanced collective defense and deterrent measures designed to ensure the transatlantic alliance could respond swiftly and firmly to changes in its security environment. See several other anti-NATO narratives such as NATO provoking Russia; NATO is fully subordinated to the USA; Eastern European countries as NATO “hostages” (Baltic states, Moldova, Poland).

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Disproof

A common pro-Kremlin narrative on “lost sovereignty” - in the case of Poland, this country is often presented as a “puppet-state” of the United States, which fully controls the domestic and foreign policy of this country.

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