DISINFO: EU sanctions against Russia are based on classic fabrications
SUMMARY
The European Union’s decision [to impose sanctions on Russian personnel] is a classic fabrication and involves the insertion of false evidence in a case that has not been investigated.
RESPONSE
This claim refers to the sanctions imposed by the EU in response to the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and constitutes a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on the Navalny poisoning. The claim was neither counterbalanced nor critically challenged in the article.
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny fell ill during a flight and the plane had to make an emergency landing in Omsk, where doctors said he was in a coma and they were trying to save his life. Since then, he has been transferred to Berlin and was treated 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 Navalny. In fact, Alexei Navalny was the victim of an attack with a chemical nerve agent while inside Russia.
On 14 September, the German government provided research by two more independent laboratories in France and Sweden, which confirmed the presence of poison from the Novichok group in the body of politician Alexei Navalny. As explained in Berlin, samples taken from Navalny were sent to these two countries for an independent investigation. In addition, samples were also sent to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which will conduct its own research.
The European Union condemned the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in the strongest possible terms.
Read similar disinformation cases alleging that the Navalny poisoning could be a strategy of the West to introduce anti-Russian sanctions, that there is no evidence of Navalny poisoning, West wants to stop Nord Stream 2 and that another reason would be found for sanctions if there had been no Navalny.