#Russia: The Kremlin focuses its disinformation efforts on Germany this week

This week the EU’s under-used EU East StratCom Task Force reveals that the Kremlin is placing Germany in the spotlight. The service provided by the European External Action Service, is the EU’s modest effort to help those duped by fake news.

If you really want fake news you can go directly to the Russian Embassy twitter feed. Today (6 April) they claimed that the Malaysian airliner MH17 that was brought down over Easter Ukraine in July 2014 “was meant to bring Berlin on board as regards the Western policy of sanctions against Russia,… Why does nobody ask who benefits fron such timely incidents?” This was very clumsy and plodding – even by Russian standards – this may work at home, but it will not work in Europe (well maybe Hungary). People have become a little more questioning.

Just a reminder, this was the assessment by the US: “We assess that Flight MH17 was likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine. We base this judgment on several factors. Over the past month, we have detected an increasing amount of heavy weaponry to separatist fighters crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine. Last weekend, Russia sent a convoy of military equipment with up to 150 vehicles including tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and multiple rocket launchers to the separatist. We also have information indicating that Russia is providing training to separatist fighters at a facility in southwest Russia, and this effort included training on air defense systems."

The latest information bulletin from the ‘Disinformation Review’:

This week, Germany was in the limelight of pro-Kremlin disinformation once again. There were several reports in Czech pro-Kremlin outlets accusing Germany of being the ruler of the Czech Republic and of hindering the country from entering the Eurozone, as well as accusations that Germany controls the Czech Armed Forces.

In a Lithuanian outlet, a German commander in NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence battalion in Lithuania was accused of being a Russian agent, although the picture meant to prove the false claim was a fake: an image of the commander's head was pasted onto another image with the help of Photoshop, as shown here and here.

In a Slovakian outlet, it was announced that Angela Merkel is resigning – confusingly the statement was withdrawn later in the very same article, a case of a severely misleading headline. Furthermore, Berlin was accused of aiming to rule the European continent via Brussels, with a Czech outlet making parallels between the Brexit negotiations and the Munich agreement that permitted Germany to annex some Czechoslovakian territories in 1938.

Europe is everyone's enemy

But it was not only Germany that was targeted with disinformation: The European Union, Member States and EU institutions also got their share of accusations this week. Just as last year, when after the horrific terror attacks in Brussels, pro-Kremlin outlets blamed Angela Merkel, the West, Europe – or even claimed the attacks were staged and did not happen at all; so too, after the horrifying attack in London on the 22nd of March, did a pro-Kremlin outlet claim this was orchestrated by the "Brussels elite" in order to deter Theresa May from triggering Brexit.

Meanwhile the European Parliament building in Strasbourg was claimed to have been inspired by the Tower of Babel (although it was really inspired by Roman amphitheatres) and the EU was accused of being a "satanistic project" apparently "proven" by a poster designed by the Council of Europe. This bizarre disinformation has been around since 2008 and reminds us of last year's disinformation that that the new NATO headquarters building was inspired by Nazi symbols.

On Russian state TV we saw yet another example of historical revisionism where it was claimed that a united Europe leads to war with Russia as during WWII and that Europe started the war in Ukraine – overlooking such historical facts as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact for example or the more recent facts on the ground; Europe did not start the war in Ukraine and is not participating in it – in contrast to Russia's activity.

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