For years, Russian propaganda has consistently denied the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria. During the tragic events that saw first the brutal repression of the Syrian revolution and then the bloody civil war involving other foreign actors in the region, including Russia and Iran, every effort was made to deny or downplay the use of sarin gas against the civilian population or rebel groups. Through its own disinformation network and proxy media outlets, Russia has spread the idea throughout the global infosphere that events such as the massacre in Ghouta, the suburb of Damascus where more than a thousand people were killed in 2013 [1] , were nothing more than a pretext fabricated from scratch to prompt US intervention against the Assad regime. In Italy, over the years, we have witnessed a vast output of documents denying the massacres carried out with chemical weapons, published and disseminated by a network of media outlets that has consistently supported the former Syrian regime. Authors such as Maurizio Blondet and websites such as Luogocomune [2] and Piccole note [3] (which form part of the network of pro-Russian blogs grouped under sinistrainrete.info) began as early as 2013 to deny the massacres by shifting the focus onto the United States. Today, Blondet is busy passing off Russian drones crossing into Europe as Ukrainian ones, or, more audaciously, attempting to prove the presence of graphene in vaccines; but ten years ago, he was among the most active defenders of the butcher of Damascus.
The history of the link between chemical weapons in Syria and Russia is rather long and complex, and we can trace its origins back to when Lavrov managed to push through the UN resolution in 2013 as the start of the complete destruction of Syria’s arsenal [4] That announcement unfortunately turned out to be a farce, and the regime continued to make full use of these weapons banned by international conventions, persisting with its strategy of terror and war crimes. On 4 April 2017, near Khan Shaykhun, the Syrian army bombed the town, killing ninety people with sarin gas [5].
Well, it was reported just a few days ago that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague has discovered a bomb depot and a warehouse in Syria containing chemical materials suitable for the production of sarin and chlorine gas [6] This discovery follows the OPCW’s work following the fall of the Assad regime, when it became possible to return to Syria to search for chemical weapons ammunition and storage sites. It is clear once again that the lies of the Russian propaganda machine have been refuted by the reality of the facts. Rivers of ink have been spilled in recent years to shift the blame for the worst war crimes or to deny them outright, but reality is stubborn and the facts resurface even years later.
At the same time as this propaganda is being debunked, however, the Italian political debate is saturated with other fake news spread by the same pro-Russian disinformation network. Whether it concerns Russian attacks on the civilian population in Ukraine or the effectiveness of vaccines, it is striking to see that, within the left-wing debate, the denialist theories of those who, in the past, sought to defend the indefensible and divert attention from the criminal responsibility of the terrorist state currently in power in the Kremlin are still being given credence.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)