Former FBI Director 75-year-old Robert Mueller spent $40 million and 22-months to find the obvious that Russia engages in pernicious propaganda, also finding that 73-year-old President Donald Trump did not conspire with Kremlin to win the 2016 presidential election. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and most of the Democrat Party insisted Trump conspired with Russia to win the election. Lead impeachment prosecutor Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), even after Mueller delivered his March 23, 2019 Final Report, insisted he had proof of Trump’s collusion with Russia. Yet Schiff never produced any evidence because there wasn’t any. Now Russia’s accused by the European Union [EU] of a “significant disinformation campaign,” to sow chaos in the West while it battles the global coronavirus AKA CoV-2 or Covid-19 outbreak. EU officials insist that Russia’s up to its old tricks.
Russia’s FSB, formerly the KGB, works around the clock to supply Western news outlets fake news, something their good at with Russia’s state run media. EU documents show that Russia supplies fake news to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google, all of which disseminate news to its millions of viewers. U.K, German, French, Spanish, Italian and French social media outlets get a continuous flow of fake news from Russia, as does the U.S. “A significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremilin outlets regarding COVID-19 is ongoing,” said a March 19 classified nine-page EU report. EU officials believe the Kremilin is trying to subvert Western democracies for the purpose of gaining more domination in world economic markets. Russia was kicked out the G8 when Putin decided to invade Crimea March 1, 2014.
Russia has the 11th ranked Gross Domestic Product at $1637,892 trillion, just below Canada at $1,730, 917 trillion and above South Korea at $1,629,892 trillion. Unlike Korea and Canada, Russia’s GDP is heavily based on petroleum and natural gas sales, something crashing in the SARS CoV-2 global pandemic. In comparison to the United States at $21,439.453 trillion or EU at $18,705.132, Russia looks like a minor economic power. With oil crashing to under $20 a barrel, Russia’s economy is on thin ice. If there are games played by Russian trolls loosely connected with the Kremlin, it’s because Russia wants to stay relevant. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose High Court granted him permission to rule until 2036, uses his military to intimidate more defenseless countries like Georgia and Ukraine. Other than that, Russia has watched the world pass them by.
Whatever propaganda spews from Moscow or St. Petersburg, the West isn’t impacted as long its tagged and identified. EU’s database uncovered 80 cases of disinformation since Jan. 22, fake news stories, about the coronavirus outbreak. One fake story said a U.S. soldier spread Covid-19 in Lithuania and Ukraine, both countries with poor relations to Moscow. “The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries . . in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies,” said the EU report. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denies that Russia has an organized disinformation campaign to subvert the West. “Pro-Kremlin disinformation messages advance a narrative that the coronavirus is a human creation, weaponized by the West,” the EU report concludes, not that different from U.S. conspiracy theories.
Communist China, Russia, North Korea and Iran have much in common when it comes to manufacturing fake news stories to indoctrinate their people or countries around the planet. Putin recently said he’s not a Tsar because he “goes to work everyday” for the Russian people. He can’t explain why his country does not allow independent journalists or, for that matter, why he asked the Russian High Court to grant him several extensions to remain president for life. No one in the U.S. EU or NATO should be surprised by Russian efforts to subvert Western democracies. While the West battles China-originated global coronavirus pandemic, it’s a perfect time for Putin’s bots to slam the West with more disinformation. Disinformation is the technical name for fake news, making up stories to advance political agendas. Watching his economy shrink, Putin looks for ways to assert power.
Putin wants to convince the EU that he would do a better job of managing the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, essentially accusing the Brussels-based European Commission of incompetence. Much like China that rushed into the EU to provide medical supplies for a pandemic they started, Russia likes to emasculate the EU and United States. Russian disinformation has been directed to hit EU countries like Italy and Spain, currently reeling from runaway coronavirus outbreaks. Whether Russia’s disinformation is designed to influence a U.S. election or manage the global Covid-19 pandemic, it all aims to weaken public opinion about Western democracies. Russian trolls are especially active when Putin thinks Russia is becoming more irrelevant on the world stage, especially after watching the price of oil and natural gas fall to 20-year lows, making Putin look bad.
