Russia is winning the disinformation war on Syria and Salisbury

In the disinformation war over the use, abuse, nonuse, alleged use of chemical weapons, the Russian model of combat propaganda is winning hands down – given the sheer volume of output on all media and platforms, obscuring forensic investigation into what really happened in Salisbury last month and in Douma ten days ago.

Denial takes many forms. We are told by allies of the Kremlin that either the attacks did not happen at all, or rather they didn’t happen quite in the way that the perfidious metropolitan and international media portrayed them.

Following reports accompanied by video images of choking children in underground hospitals of a possible chemical attack on the besieged enclave of Douma, we had a now familiar cycle of denial and rebuttal. On the one hand the Assad military regime said there had been no attack. Then the Russians appeared to block a UN resolution for an international inspection.

The propaganda cycle was disrupted by the US-France-UK allied air strikes on three Syrian military facilities allegedly involved in the generation, operation and command of chemical warfare attacks, particularly sarin.

Since then, attempts have been made to get OPCW inspectors into Douma, now that it is in the hands of the Assad regime and Russian military police. As I write the inspectors are still waiting. But the regime says that the eruption of gunfire showed the district was unsafe for visitors.

At the beginning of last week, however, the regime did manage to facilitate a visit by a small party of journalists, among them Robert Fisk of the Independent and a CBS News team. Their reports were very different.

Fisk said he encountered a 58-year-old Syrian doctor who stated that the video of the Douma victims is genuine. He “then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.”

Quite where Dr Assim Rahaibani was at the time when the children were overcome, or what he was doing, is not explained. Fisk wrote: “He is by his own admission not an eyewitness.” So, his “evidence” appears to be that he saw the video later and was on tap to talk to the journalists as they were given access to Douma, a privilege that OPCW inspectors would subsequently be denied.

The report by CBS News describes one of those still stuck in Douma (many have been bussed out to Idlib) saying “all of a sudden gas spread around us. We couldn’t breathe, it smelled like chlorine.” Presumably the witness would know the difference between the distinctive whiff of chlorine and the “oxygen starvation” ascribed by Dr Assim Rahaibani.

Another Syrian interviewed by CBS, Nasr Hanan, is clear about what happened. His brother, Hazneh, is one of those seen in the activists’ video, dead and with foam bubbling from his lips. Nasr Hanan described the desperate attempt to hose down the victims – the only thing to do with chlorine victims, it seems. You need to do it with a chlorine solution, says Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the chemical weapons expert who has had direct contact with the hospitals in Douma and Ghouta. He has little doubt from blood sample analysis from the victims, that chlorine was used in an attack on Douma, and probably another toxin, most likely to be a very small amount of sarin.

Nasr Hannan showed the CBS team an orange coloured cylindrical projectile lodged on a roof, that he believed to be one of the containers in the gas attack. This, apparently, is different from the object shown on the BBC.

The Robert Fisk story was cited across Twitter and social media by the ‘false flag’ lobby claiming that Assad is the victim of concerted western propaganda operations. In the past they have claimed that Ghouta was not subjected to Sarin bombardment in August 2013, that the Khan Sheikhoun chemical event in April last year was staged by Al Nusra and Al Qaeda affiliates, and that this April there was no chemical attack in Douma. Many of the ‘false flag’ accusations of misreporting are made against NGOs and agencies such as the White Helmets – outposts of the UK Foreign Office and the American government – and Red Crescent.

But this is a story born not of the fake news and alternative facts of the inexact Trumpian lexicon. Let’s be clear. This is about weaponised news and kompromatov, which seems to be Russian practice.

This is the secretive doctrine attributed to General Vasily Gerasimov. Mark Galeotti, the strategist and blogger in Prague, claims that the Gerasimov doctrine does not exist, and he himself invented it as a convenient shorthand. The facts on the ground and across the airwaves and cyberspace, suggest otherwise. Something like the approach to information subversion and counterfactual propaganda accredited to the Gerasimov school is taking place and being deployed by the Russians.

In this hybrid conflict, journalists, news organisations and above all the commentariat might see themselves as targets and victims of hostility. Media and comment space are now really something more. They are an active feature of the conflict landscape itself.

The advent of 24/7 round the clock instant from-the-scene-of-the-action reporting in the late 1980s, put the reporter firmly in the battle space. No longer a dispassionate bystander, the journalist/commentators became actors, agents, catalysts and prime movers in the events they were there to report. They could no longer claim the detachment of the guests of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, who drove out in carriages the day after to watch the action at Waterloo from a distant knoll. They could, and can, effect outcomes. This power has been hugely enhanced by the advent of mobile phones, text, and the familiar apps like WhatsApp, SnapChat, Telegram and Instagram.

The BBC, with its mishmash of news values and criteria, has played a fascinating role in the conflict in the past couple of weeks. The rash of one BBC correspondent interviewing another has pointed up the inverse ratio of comment and speculation to reporting hard, empirical fact.

As the US, UK, French stand-off missile attacks went in, the BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen was proclaiming the risk of imminent “global war.” Bowen even mentioned “a third world war” – a line he quickly ditched. But global? Are China, Japan, Australia, Germany, Brazil or South Africa involved in any scale?

At the same time, the BBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent reported briefly from the edges of Douma, and then from the national day celebration for Syria and Assad’s victory from central Damascus. The following evening the same kinds of celebration were filmed in the citadel of Aleppo, the great glacis of Saladin festooned with Assad portraits and flags. Lyse Doucet told us that this is a celebration of victory and relief at the arrival of peace. There was almost no mention of the terrible destruction of Aleppo. Both Doucet and Bowen informed us solemnly, that despite a bit of resistance in Idlib province, the war is done and Assad has won.

Looking at the live action map of Syria one day late last week I noted six or seven different areas of fighting in and around the Syrian borders. No wonder a grinning Assad posed with a cohort of Russian advisers on his day of celebration – hardly in sight are the representatives of the real muscle that keeps him in power, the Iranian Quds force, Hezbollah and the Shia levies from Iraq. They are still going to be needed if he has a hope of closing the war off. And his junta, and the Russians will have to pay their share of Danegeld.

The Kremlin alternative to Trump’s vacuous ‘mission accomplished’ statement must be ‘job done’ – but with ‘there’s a bit more to do.’

Weaponised news doesn’t have to rely on just making it up. You just need to sow confusion.

With the Skripal case in Salisbury we fell right through Alice’s Looking Glass. Russian tactics have run from the schoolboy cry of “I never did it” to muddying waters in discussing the science involved.

The denials became refined to stating that Russia never made Novichok – 234, the substance that the UK Defence Laboratories at Porton Down quickly identified as the agent used on the Skripals, and to claiming the Brits had done it themselves.

The Russian foreign minister then claimed that the Swiss government’s Spiez Laboratory, working for the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Warfare had identified the presence of BZ in the samples, BZ being an agent largely developed by the US, the British and one other Nato power. Furthermore, said Lavrov, this information had been ‘confidentially’ provided by a Swiss source.

The BZ accusation was reported by both the Independent and Reuters, without any check and expert explanation of how BZ got there, and so the charge stuck. The Guardian followed up by stating OPCW had not refuted Lavrov’s charge. After more than a week of rumour and innuendo, Spiez took the unprecedented step of stating, “Only OPCW can comment on this assertion. But we can repeat what we stated ten days ago. We have no doubt Porton Down has identified Novichok.” Spiez, like Porton Down, is accredited for testing to OPCW.

Spiez then followed up with a quote from the representative of the Swiss government to OPCW in a discussion at that organisation: “Before I conclude, Mr.Chairperson, my Government wishes to express its incomprehension about a statement by Russia regarding the Swiss designated laboratory at Spiez. Whether or not Spiez Laboratory was one of the designated laboratories involved in the analysis of the Salisbury samples, and analysis report of our designated laboratory would not have been drafted in the way and contained the type of language alleged to be a quote from a Spiez Laboratory report. I am referring to an English translation of a statement by the Russian Foreign Minister available on the official website of the Ministry. How such a statement could be made is incomprehensible to us.”

BZ had indeed been present in the control samples, used as comparators in identifying Novichok 234, the agent used in Salisbury. To this day the ‘false flag’ lobby are asking for specific proof that Novichok was used on the Skripals.

Jeremy Corbyn has also asked for a higher standard of proof than he has been offered so far in his briefings from the UK government agencies.

This line of criticism has been given a bizarre twist by an interview by the BBC’s Moscow Correspondent Steve Rosenberg with Vladimir Uglev, a scientist who made Novichok A234 at a laboratory in southern Russia. Uglev, speaking from an unspecified Black Sea resort said it was likely that he himself made the sample used on the Skripals, given its purity. Uglev said he was sure “Russia was behind this – from the sequence of events, and the behaviour of the leadership afterwards. But you will never prove it, unless you find the specific test tube used.”

The sequence of events, according to a highly placed UK Homeland Command source, was that Porton Down knew what the toxin was within two hours of starting tests. They identified the production lab as being in southern Russia – most likely the one Uglev spoke of. Like Uglev, the official said that the toxin was very durable and this presented serious problems in Salisbury. The house, where the highest concentration was found on the door, and the car, will most likely have to be destroyed completely. The car is due to be incinerated.

What my source would not tell me, nor discuss, was who actually laid the toxin and how, and with what motive. This has been the weakest part of the whole story, and where the media, official, conspiratorial, or otherwise, have been less than forensic. As in the best, and worst, police procedurals, it’s a question of finding “the perp.”

The agencies, MI6, MI5 and the Police, probably have a number of working hypotheses, but they have been unusually successful in buttoning their lips about this.

The tracking of the Salisbury poisoners is very similar to the pursuit of the killers of Aleksander Litvenenko, who died very publicly of polonium radiation in 2006. It took his widow Marina ten years to drag the matter to a judicial verdict, when a special enquiry accused agents of Vladimir Putin of being responsible, naming Andrei Lugovoy, now a member of the Duma.

British authorities fear that the lives of Yulia and Sergei Skripal are in danger – for like Litvenenko, they may be able to identify their would-be killers. This is why any Russian organisation, official and unofficial, is being kept away from them. The Kremlin counters that this is proof of Western chicanery, thus sowing further confusion. The news cycle is in this way used by Russia in pursuit of its policy aims.

Welcome to the world of weaponised news – the manipulation and distortion of truth, half-truth and downright lies, creating their own, parallel, dystopia.