DISINFO: Neither the USSR nor the post-Soviet Russia has ever killed their opponents, so nobody can blame Moscow for poisoning the Skripals.

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

DISINFO: Neither the USSR nor the post-Soviet Russia has ever killed their opponents, so nobody can blame Moscow for poisoning the Skripals.

SUMMARY

During the last decades, neither Russia nor the Soviet Union has been engaged in extrajudicial killings; neither in the territory of Russia, nor abroad.

RESPONSE

Killing opponents of the regime was a practice familiar to the USSR, see e.g. the case of Leon Trotsky. There has also been a case of murdering a former Russian spy already - in 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by two Russians in London. As the UK public inquiry has found, "the FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by [Nikolai] Patrushev [head of the security service in 2006] and also by President Putin”: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/alexander-litvinenko-was-probably-murdered-on-personal-orders-of-putin

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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