Distrust as a weapon in the information war



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So it was again a neurotoxin of the Novitschok group, just like in March 2018, when former Russian agent Sergej Skripal and his daughter Julia were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury, England. And, as so many times before, the victim was once again an opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin: Alexei Navalny, a constant nuisance to the Kremlin; one that is a thorn in the side of many in Russia due to its discovery videos. Also one whose range of action the Russian elite would like to see restricted in times of protests in the east of the country, a weak economy and a drop in Putin’s approval ratings. Furthermore, Navalny would not be the first victim of criminal circles in Russia if you think about the murder of the Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov or the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

However, there is something mysterious about the Navalny case, and not just because of the rare neurotoxin that refers to a state like the client. As with Skripal, as in the case of the assassinated Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, sensational toxins were used to create a highway of tracks in the direction of the Kremlin, not only damaging the image in the West. And that at a very unfavorable time for Russia, that is, before the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Can you ask the brilliant Putin calculator, especially on the Internet, to be really so stupid as to scare your important economic partner? Germany with such action? ?

Some come to completely doubt Navalny’s Russian-style poisoning or blame a Western secret service. After all, the United States benefited from the attack. The loss of confidence in wide circles in Western elites, which was again evident in the Corona crisis, is also evident in the Navalny case.

That is precisely why it makes perfect sense for Russia to remove the Kremlin critic at this point. Because the attack is so obviously absurd, it continues to cast doubt in the West on everything that has been announced in the official press and by official sources. As the Corona crisis has shown, many people no longer trust the political system. And trust is a political capital, just as distrust is a weapon for Russia in the information war against the West. There, of course, the voices now grow louder, demanding at last harsh consequences: interference in the elections, poisoning of critics, the annexation of Crimea – the Kremlin’s record of sins is too long to be generously overlooked, they say. .

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