Russia just doesn't even care to keep up appearances anymore:

[Blue_Tires]

RUSSIA’S ‘EVIDENCE’ THAT THE U.S. IS HELPING ISIS IS FOOTAGE FROM A 2015 COMPUTER GAME

Russia’s Ministry of Defense has provoked a torrent of mockery from its own followers after it published “irrefutable evidence” that the U.S. is in league with the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) that turned out to be footage from a 2015 video game.

Russia, which has backed Bashar al-Assad during the war in Syria, has often been critical of U.S. operations there, repeatedly claiming that U.S. forces are at best ineffectual at fighting ISIS or at worst in cahoots with jihadist groups.

After a series of allegations, Moscow decided to publish video evidence that it claims shows how close Washington is to the group it is officially fighting.

“The U.S. are actually covering the ISIS combat units to recover their combat capabilities, redeploy, and use them to promote the American interests in the Middle East,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense wrote in a Twitter post, with attached images. The post also linked to a longer Facebook message accusing the U.S. of sympathizing with ISIS.

http://www.newsweek.com/russias-evidence-us-helping-isis-comes-2015-computer-game-710474

[Squinch]

1. Another reason to despise Trump: we used to be able to sneer at the transparent nature

of Russia's lies.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. Old hat. They've been doing this for years.

http://mashable.com/2015/05/31/russia-fake-mh17-report/#dnqLc6HHbgqy

Satellite images show clearly that Russia faked its MH17 report

KIEV, Ukraine — Faked. Forged. Doctored. Photoshopped.


That's what new analysis of publicly available satellite images, published Sunday by a team of independent digital sleuths, reveal Russia's Ministry of Defense did with satellite imagery presented in its official report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. They say it was Russia's attempt to blame Ukraine for the crime.

The ill-fated Boeing 777 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board the passenger airliner were killed. Debris from the plane and passengers' bodies crashed and burned in a rural area near the town of Torez, deep inside territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists.


****





But that report appears to have been a sham, according to detailed forensic analysis conducted by Eliot Higgins, a visiting research associate at King's College London's war studies department, and his team of digital investigators at Bellingcat, the organization behind the new report.

After determining the source of the photos — in this case Russia's Defense Ministry — Bellingcat analyzed their metadata, and checked them against publicly available satellite imagery of the same location from dates before and after July 17.

Higgins told Mashable that he's "100% confident" Bellingcat's analysis proves Russia's Defense Ministry presented "faked" satellite imagery from June 2014 as being from the days leading up to the downing of MH17 in July 2014.