“The Kremlin has turned its disinformation machine on those who are investigating the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in July of 2014, using state employees, state-run media, and the state-run, though unacknowledged, ‘troll factory’ of fake Internet accounts. The primary goal of the media attacks has been to undermine the credibility of citizen journalist group Bellingcat, an independent researcher into the crash. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB), which conducted an official investigation in 2015 and concluded that MH17 was downed by a surface-to-air missile, has also been targeted.
“The attacks have followed a pattern that could be termed ‘vilify and amplify.’ They come just before the publication on September 28 of the results of a criminal investigation into the crash by an international team led by the Dutch prosecutor’s office. These attacks reveal how the Kremlin public-relations machine works. They also reveal the extent of the Kremlin’s concern ahead of the publication of the criminal investigation. Going by the attacks on Bellingcat, the criminal investigation itself can anticipate a similarly aggressive response, should its findings be unfavorable to the Kremlin. …
“This behavior sheds light on Kremlin propaganda practices. The system uses state employees to vilify ‘opponents,’ then uses state-owned media and the ‘troll network’ to amplify them. So far, the campaign does not appear to have penetrated the Western media. Its significance lies more in the fact that, given the manpower and resources dedicated to condemning those who would tie the Kremlin to the crash, it reveals the Kremlin’s disquiet about the criminal probe’s likely findings.”
– Ben Nimmo, the information defense fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, writing on September 27 in his article titled Vilify and Amplify: How the Kremlin’s Disinformation “Machine is attacking the MH-17 Probe.”
“In the United States, we will never forget that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty was triggered for the first time after 9/11. And I can assure you – that whatever you may have read in recent times – the United States of America will never fail to meet its own Article 5 obligations should any NATO member come under attack.
“Last July, at the alliance summit in Warsaw, our leaders gave tangible backing to that principle by agreeing to enhance NATO’s presence in the East and to move forward with the most substantial new deployment of allied capability in the region in the past quarter of a century.
“…I emphasize – and I want to emphasize this particularly in the wake of the news of the last few days – NATO is a defensive alliance. The Russian people, in particular, should know that despite what their leaders sometimes tell them, our alliance does not seek to weaken, to contain, or to divide their nation or any other nation. We want to work with Russia. We want to work with a Russia that is just as committed to solving common challenges. In fact, I have probably spent as much time with the Russian foreign minister as I have with any other foreign diplomat.
“But the willingness of NATO and EU countries to search for common ground with Russia doesn’t relieve us of the obligation to stand our ground on behalf of freedom and international law, which is why we remain steadfast in our support for a stable, united and democratic Ukraine. And Moscow should have no doubt on this point: we will stand our ground. Blatant aggression is not something that any of us are prepared to accept, and no place in the world should understand it better than Europe. So we have imposed sanctions and we are insisting on a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Donbas and the illegal annexation of Crimea – even as we encourage the government in Ukraine to stay the course and accelerate the pace of reform. …”
– Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Brussels on October 4 about the trans-Atlantic relationship.