Moscow Media Outlets Today with Disturbing Unanimity Say Ukraine Readying Chemical Weapons Attack against Donbass

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 25 – On Western Christmas when too few outside of Moscow and Kyiv are paying close attention, the Moscow media has filled up with stories that the Ukrainian military is preparing to launch a chemical weapons attack against the breakaway regions of Ukraine’s Donbass. Yandex news lists 82 such stories as of 1400 EST.

            All of the stories rely on a report from Eduard Basurin, the deputy chief of the popular militia of the DNR (youtube.com/watch?v=XcIbdfSLLGI), and almost without exception they appear to have been written or broadcast to stir up anti-Ukrainian hysteria.  (For examples, see.)

rg.ru/2018/12/25/poezd-s-toksichnym-veshchestvom-zametili-pod-doneckom.html, gazeta.ru/politics/2018/12/25_a_12107827.shtml, новости-донбасса.ru-an.info/новости/представитель-армии-днр-в-красногоровку-каратели-завезли-бочки-с-химическим-отравляющим-веществом/ and m.lenta.ru/news/2018/12/25/nanuxalis/

            There is no other confirmation of Basurin’s claims. What makes this media explosion of charges against Ukraine especially worrisome, as Pavel Felgengauer has pointed out, is that Russian officials often charge others in advance with doing exactly what Moscow is planning to do itself (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/12/both-russia-and-ukraine-ready-for-new.html).