DISINFO: Russia is falsely accused of misdeeds by simply affirming that its responsibility is “highly likely”
SUMMARY
After 2014, the UN started using a new method against Russia and other countries. Now it is enough to stigmatise and blame a country, often Russia itself, for some kind of sin and not bother seeking further evidence, simply by saying that its guilt is “highly likely”. This is a really cheap way, in every sense, of waging a psychological war.
RESPONSE
This is part of a recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative to portray Russia as a blameless victim of Western machinations. One of the most prominent cases in which the expression “highly likely” has been used by Western authorities is the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok, as in UK prime minister Theresa May’s letter to the UN Security Council on March 2018, after the British investigation had established that either the Russian Government was behind the attack or it had lost control of the nerve agent to a non-State actor. Since then, the only relevant suspects of the case have been identified as operatives of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU). You can see other examples of disinformation about Russia’s alleged innocence in our database, such as claims about false UK and US accusations for the downing of the flight MH17, the Mueller report as proof of how Russia is always falsely blamed, the annexation of Crimea as the will of its population and in full compliance of international law, the Skripal case as a sham, the recurrent accusations of Russophobia or anti-Russian stances, or the affirmation that is NATO, not Russia, who is involved in the Donbass conflict.