the alibi machine: the Pattern

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Two days after the attack on the maternity ward, new warnings appear on Russian social media channels.

The focus this time: Mariupol’s Drama Theatre.
Hundreds of Ukrainians are sheltering there from Russian airstrikes.
At 10 a.m. on March 16, 2022, the theatre is hit by Russian airstrikes. 

Initial estimates suggest hundreds of people are killed.
It’s the same pattern as the airstrike on Mariupol’s Maternity Ward:

Russian media outlets and officials lay the groundwork for a potential attack.

The attack happens. 

Media outlets and officials deny that Russia is to blame, and instead blame Ukraine.

“Whenever you’re looking at war crimes, crimes against humanity, there’s always the excuse that this is a one-off, there’s a bad apple, one person did something. When you see it as a pattern, when you see the actors repeating, then you can go, okay, this is part of a consistent behavior, part of a plan, and it becomes like a character trait for a criminal in a court case.“

Peter Pomerantsev

Reckoning Project Co-Founder

Russia, Disinformation, and the Syrian Civil War

Russia repeatedly attacked the credibility of the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) which determined that the Syrian regime was carrying out chemical attacks. 

Michael Weiss, of The Insider, is writing a history of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) and reports that the unit hacked the OPCW as part of its information warfare operations:

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Why did they want to exfiltrate data from the OPCW? So that they could see this is what the West is preparing to say, and this is how we have to muddy the waters. So here are the counterfactual narratives that we should be putting out. One of them was ‘there was no attack, it was all just manufactured, it was a stage play by crisis actors who feigned asphyxiation and symptoms of being exposed to chlorine.’ Or ‘it was a chemical attack but it was done by the other side.’

The Syria Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets, was another major target of Russian disinformation. This volunteer rescue organisation documented the attacks on the ground, and their footage and physical evidence proved critical to international investigations. Networks of bots and trolls linked to Russia attacked the White Helmets repeatedly. Russia’s ambassador to the UN submitted one such blogger’s report as formal evidence to the Security Council.

The Syrian civil war morphed out of the pro-democracy Arab Spring protests of 2011, when demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian government were met with violent repression. 

The country fractured into a complex conflict involving government forces, armed opposition groups, and jihadist factions including Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Russia entered the Syrian civil war at the request of President Assad in late 2015. 

Syrian forces had already used chemical weapons against civilians by the time Russia entered the war. By 2016, their use was ‘widespread and systematic,’ according to Human Rights Watch.

By 2018, as Syrian government forces continue to carry out chemical attacks against civilians, a pattern emerges in Russia’s behaviour.
THE PATTERN:

Russian officials say Syrian rebels are planning to fake a chemical weapons attack and blame it on the Syrian army.
Several weeks later an attack takes place. 

Dozens of civilians are killed. 

Syrian rebels and Western governments blame Syrian government forces.
Russia denies the accusations

And then blames others.
Investigation by the OPCW later confirmed that Syrian government forces carried out the attack. 

But it took five years.  

By then the same pattern was being repeated in Ukraine.

For months Russia warned that Ukraine planned to destroy the dam and flood communities downstream.

On June 6 2023 the dam was destroyed. 

More than 30 people were killed.

A joint assessment by the UN and the Government of Ukraine finds that the flooding damaged more than 37,000 residential properties, 37 educational institutions and 11 health facilities. 

Total losses were more than USD $13 billion.

Russia denies involvement. It blames Ukraine.

In May 2022, Russian blogs and Telegram channels start discussing captured Ukrainian soldiers, held at Olenivka prison. They say the Ukrainian POWs are “confessing” to “war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army,” and Ukrainian authorities are planning to silence them.

On July 29 an explosion kills at least 53 Ukrainian POW and injures hundreds.

Russia denies involvement. It says Ukraine killed its own soldiers to keep them quiet.


A week before the attack, Russian channels warn Ukraine will use civilians as ‘human shields’ in Kramatorsk. 
On April 8, at 10.28am, a ballistic Tochka-U missile hits Kramatorsk railway station. It’s equipped with a cluster-munition warhead which disperses 50 small bombs across the station. 

At least 58 civilians are killed.

Russia denies involvement. It says Ukraine bombed its own citizens.

There’s something curious about the Kramatorsk attack though.

According to The Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti posts about the attack at 10:25am.

That’s three minutes BEFORE the attack takes place.


The tweet is now deleted, but screenshots were taken before it was removed.

“One of the mistakes that the Russian info alibi machine made was to publish information about a strike on the Kramatorsk railway station before it actually took place. 

It’s a sort of sloppy mistake that you always want the criminal to make. Without all the other evidence, I don’t think we’d be seeing the important patterns that we’re looking into, but it’s always good for a lawyer if the criminal ends up leaving a shoe at the crime scene.”

Peter Pomerantsev 

Reckoning Project Co-Founder

Photo Credits: 1.Mohammed Khair/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images. 2.Stringer/AFP via Getty Images. 3. White helmets/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images. 4. Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images. 5. Hamza Al-AjwehAFP via Getty Images. 6. Satellite image (c) 2023 Maxar Technologies. 7. Andriy Zhyhaylo/Obozrevatel/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images. 8. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images. 9. Grzedzinski for The Washington Post via Getty Images.