“As Germany heads into a winter of energy rationing, officials warn that Russia could spread disinformation online to sow social unrest in the country.”
Is that satire?
For decades, large parts of our politics and also of the secret services have deliberately turned a blind eye to the subject of Russia.
Not only did Russia have people murdered in the middle of the German capital and we expelled two Russian diplomats as a reaction, there are very practical examples of how Russian disinformation works here.
The case is probably little known outside Germany, but it is a prime example.
In 2016, a 13-year-old German-Russian girl did not come home from school and her parents reported her missing. She turned up the next day and told them that she had been abducted by three strangers, held in a flat and raped; the perpetrators were “southerners”.
The location of her smartphone’s radio cell later revealed that this could not be the case and she then admitted that she had spent the night at a friend’s house because of problems. During the whole time, fake news about the case was spread by Russian media here, Lavrov, this pathological liar, claimed that Germany was covering up the case. People were so incited that there were even demonstrations.
The parents and relatives of the family said after the events that they saw themselves instrumentalised by the Russian media and the Russian embassy as well as “officials” and, according to the Russian-German association Vision, became “pawns in a political dispute”.
Have we learned anything from this? No, because we are particularly clever when it comes to Russia, we understand the Russians best and the others, especially the Central Europeans, only have prejudices…
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“As Germany heads into a winter of energy rationing, officials warn that Russia could spread disinformation online to sow social unrest in the country.”
Is that satire?
For decades, large parts of our politics and also of the secret services have deliberately turned a blind eye to the subject of Russia.
Not only did Russia have people murdered in the middle of the German capital and we expelled two Russian diplomats as a reaction, there are very practical examples of how Russian disinformation works here.
The case is probably little known outside Germany, but it is a prime example.
In 2016, a 13-year-old German-Russian girl did not come home from school and her parents reported her missing. She turned up the next day and told them that she had been abducted by three strangers, held in a flat and raped; the perpetrators were “southerners”.
The location of her smartphone’s radio cell later revealed that this could not be the case and she then admitted that she had spent the night at a friend’s house because of problems. During the whole time, fake news about the case was spread by Russian media here, Lavrov, this pathological liar, claimed that Germany was covering up the case. People were so incited that there were even demonstrations.
The parents and relatives of the family said after the events that they saw themselves instrumentalised by the Russian media and the Russian embassy as well as “officials” and, according to the Russian-German association Vision, became “pawns in a political dispute”.
Have we learned anything from this? No, because we are particularly clever when it comes to Russia, we understand the Russians best and the others, especially the Central Europeans, only have prejudices…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_case_of_Lisa_F.
I’m German and I don’t begrudge Russia more than my own government for the suicidal moves in energy sector in the past decade.