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.

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Rubaltic.ru (Archived)
  • 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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