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Incident I00029: MH17 investigation

  • Summary: Since the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on 17 July 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board… wreckage of the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km (25 mi) from the border.The shoot-down occurred in the War in Donbass, during the Battle of Shakhtarsk, in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels. This has proven to be an ongoing example of Russia and their proxies ability to wage a disinformation campaign, and exemplify the use of the 4 D’s (dismiss, distort, distract, and dismay)

  • incident type: campaign

  • Year started: 2016

  • Countries: Russia , Ukraine

  • Found via: OII

  • Date added: 2019-02-24

Technique Description given for this incident
T0001 5Ds (dismiss, distort, distract, dismay, divide) IT00000081 4 D's (dismiss, distort, distract, dismay...Official channels ie: Embassies & Defence Ministry; TASS
T0010 Cultivate ignorant agents IT00000084 cultivate, manipulate, exploit useful idiots
T0019 Generate information pollution IT00000082 RT & Sputnik generate information pollution (synthetic media)
T0031 YouTube IT00000087 YouTube; Reddit;
T0032 Reddit IT00000088 YouTube; Reddit;
T0040 Demand unsurmountable proof IT00000089 Demand insurmountable proof
T0046 Search Engine Optimization IT00000085 SEO optimisation/manipulation ("key words")
T0052 Tertiary sites amplify news IT00000086 News circulated/amplifed by tertiary sites (Russia Insider, The Duran, Geopolitica.ru, Mint Press News, Oriental Review, globalresearch.ca)
T0053 Twitter trolls amplify and manipulate IT00000080 Twitter trolls amplify & manipulate
T0054 Twitter bots amplify IT00000079 Twitter bots amplify & manipulate
T0056 Dedicated channels disseminate information pollution IT00000083 RT & Sputnik generate information pollution (synthetic media)

DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW

Actor: Russia

Timeframe: July 2014 - still active

Date: July 17, 2014

Presumed goals:

  • Ongoing campaign to discredit/undermine Ukraine & NATO & Democracy

Method:

  • Multi-pronged media & source driven campaign… ie:
  • Russian state sources military, embassy, media (RT, Sputnik, TASS);
  • Kremlin’s “witting idiots” ie: 21Wire, Global research; trolls & bots.
  • “All” media platforms… ie: Youtube; Twitter; Reddit
  • See collection of visual assets

Counters:

  • Bellingcat; Dutch gov’t, DFRLab

Related incidents:

  • Anything related to Ukraine
  • Donetsk
  • Crimea
  • Sea of Azov
  • Ukrainian election (2019)

References:

Datasets: none searched for

Notes:

Russia still accusing Ukraine (03.25.2019)... TASS and UK Daily Mirror

First Bellingcat report: Efforts to Geolocate the Launcher 07/17/14 Countless example of Elliot Higgins & team getting trolled since, popular hashtag is #bellingcrap

This is a good summary: “But not only did Russia fiercely deny those accusations, a number of Russian leaders, officials and broadcasters responded by offering dozens of different alternative explanations, “including quite outlandish theories,” says Nilsson.

“For instance, that an airplane would’ve been loaded with already dead people and that Ukrainian airplanes would then have shot it down to make it look like Russia was shooting down passenger airplanes,” he explains.

“There were tons of these stories going around, quite a few of them coming from official Russian sources. And they were not meant to be taken seriously. They were simply supposed to occupy the attention span of the world for a while, to the extent that everyone would lose track of the original explanation, which turned out to be quite the right one.” https://globalnews.ca/news/4993120/russia-rising-part-5-maskirovka/

Topics of Ukraine-related narratives http://euromaidanpress.com/2018/12/06/ukraine-related-narratives-dominate-russian-propaganda/ Back in 2016, StopFake co-founder Yevhen Fedchenko identified 18 major Ukraine-related fake narrative topics spread by Russian propaganda by analyzing 500 debunked disinformation items. The Euromaidan Revolution as a “coup d’état“ Ukraine as a “fascist state“ Ukraine as a “failed state“ “Russia is not a part of the occupation/war in Ukraine“ Discrediting the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) Discrediting the volunteer battalions (which officially became a part of UAF in 2015) Donbas and Crimean internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees Territorial disintegration of Ukraine “Territorial claims” for parts of Ukraine from neighboring Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia Fake “international legitimization” of annexation and occupation of Crimea The war in Ukraine “conducted by the US, NATO or Western private contractors” The West’s “Ukraine fatigue“ Manipulating international organizations Fakes about EU-Ukraine relations “Decay” of the US and West in general, and the “disintegration of the EU” Flight MH17 crash fakes The West “uses biological weapons” in Ukraine Mix-ups of the fake narratives about Ukraine, Syria, ISIS terrorists (e.g., Crimean Tatars being depicted as jihadists or Ukraine as a training ground for terrorists) For post-Maidan Ukraine, Russian propaganda’s most used narratives were the Euromaidan as “coup d’etat” which brought a “Western-backed junta” (mostly “US-backed”) to power, and “fascism” as the main ideology of the post-Maidan government, Fedchenko notes.