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In reply to the discussion: Russian and Ukraine troops battle in south, prompting fears that invasion has begun [View all]The Magistrate
(95,243 posts)The Kremlin disinformation mill worked hard yesterday getting the US mercenaries in Ukraine! story out on its own state-controlled networks and sites of fellow travelers abroad but in fact, it was recycling a story that had failed to gain traction a month ago and the second telling of the story didnt stand up to scrutiny, either. In early March the Blackwater story surfaced on conspiracy sites from infowars.com to dailypaul.com; today it ended up on Daily Kos, which claimed a pedigree for the story going back to Phantom Report sourced from politikus.ru and only then ostensibly being picked up by RT.com and Daily Mail.
But politikus.ru links to another site, argumenty.ru with the Blackwater claim in a story by Aleksandr Grigoryev. In this likely original version dated 3 March, there were a thousand mercenaries in the western part of Ukraine, of which 300? were from Greystone, and had arrived by a chartered plane from London. The source for the story was former SBU agents, i.e. from the Ukrainian Ministry of State Security who also claimed there were Syrian and Chechen fighters now in Ukraine. Grigoryevs stories generally hew to the Kremlin line, and he has filed dubious reports blaming the CIA for the Westgate Mall terrorist attack in Kenya; accusing Jordan of a likely provocation with chemical weapons in Syria and claiming Russian soldiers were fighting in Syria. Then a month ago, the Daily Mail published a lurid story: At least two videos published on YouTube earlier this week show burly, heavily armed soldiers with no insignia in the city, which has been gripped by pro-Moscow protests and embedded a video from alexk which has since disappeared, but which has been uploaded by a number of other users, the earliest apparently this one 3 March:
The story was presented differently today again by RIA Novosti as a source in Ukrainian law-enforcement, implying someone currently employed. Once again, the story was extremely thin and followed a predictable trajectory and 150 soldiers were gained or actually lost along the way. Russian blogger Alexander Vinokurov wrote on his Facebook that he was watching the 21:00 pm news on Channel 1 yesterday and saw the story about the American mercenaries from Blackwater sent to Donetsk, sourced to state news agency RIA Novosti an outlet that recently was brought under tighter control in the reorganized Rossiya Segodnya state media empire. RIA Novosti had the story already posted on its site at 21:00; Channel 1 had it by 21:06 and then others within the hour. How do you like that speed? joked Vinokurov. Even if it wasnt there, it was already there. Russian commentators of course noted that there was no longer any Blackwater as such, as the company was reorganized and renamed Academi.
Later in the day, as the story picked up steam, the Russian Foreign Ministry posted a notice about it on its Facebook page and embellished it with the detail that there were 150? such soldiers a detail that was not in RIA Novostis original 7 April report (but remember, a month ago, there were originally 300 such mercenaries in argumenti.ru):
According to available information,internal troop divisions in the national guard of Ukraine with participation of fighters of the unlawful armed formation Right Sector are drawing toward the south-eastern districts of Ukraine, including Donetsk. Their task is the forcible suppression of protests of residents of the South-East of the country against the policy of the current Kiev authorities. Particular alarm is caused by the fact that about 150 American specialists from Greystone, a private military organization, dressed in the uniform of Sokol division fighters, have been brought into this operation.
What happened to 150 American mercenaries? Did they get lost? Perhaps having absorbed the point that there was no longer any Blackwater, the Foreign Minister made sure to switch to Greystone which was formerly a corporate unit of Blackwater but now a standalone business. But they felt they had better add in some number.
Zerohedge.com, a site that frequently breaks Kremlin news in English dutifully picked it up.
But remember the current RIA Novosti source was a source in the Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies not the Russian government and perhaps that was designed to make it seem more convincing. Only Channel 1 supplied unclear footage with its brief account of mercenaries from the private USA military company Blackwater dressed in the uinform of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Sokol spetsnaz fighters; others did not supply any pictures or video of these supposed troops; the picture put with the Evromaiden2014 story was in fact one used for at least 7 years showing Blackwater personnel posing and the other videos existed before this fresh Blackwater claim today. In short, the story follows the pattern weve seen so many times before with stories emanating from Russia an uncheckable kernel of a story with an anonymous source, embellishment throughout the day, synapse jumps to the pro-Kremlin networks and tabloids, and pretty soon even credible outlets are covering it.
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-communist-wins-mayoral-elections-in-novosibirsk/
( link is to an omnibus page, scroll down a bit past halfway to find it )