MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. The anti-Russian campaign supported by the Dutch Defense Ministry has been launched in the Dutch press due to the upcoming debates in the parliament regarding a budget bill, which sets out increasing of military expenditure, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Friday.
According to her, the campaign started on August 15 when De Telegraaf newspaper published an article alleging that Russian individuals were intimidating wives of Dutch F-16 jet pilots. The Russian Foreign Ministry has already responded to the publication accordingly, she recalled. "However, the story has gained political traction as well," the diplomat continued. "MPs of the Dutch States General’s Second Chamber (House of Representatives) sent an address to Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld who published an official response to the MPs’ request on this subject."
"In her response, she acknowledged that it was not possible to identify persons who threatened families of Dutch servicemen in the cases described in the De Telegraaf article," she pointed out. "Nevertheless, the minister grabbed the opportunity to revisit some hybrid threats Russia poses and repeat the traditional cliches picturing Russia as advancing destructive activities to undermine the transatlantic links of NATO members, citing an annual report of the military intelligence activities published earlier."
In view of this, the Russian diplomatic agency spokeswoman emphasized that "the Dutch parliament is scheduled to discuss a budget bill for the next year in a few weeks’ time where military expenditure is set to be increased." "Overall, the puzzle is complete," she said. "It’s not hard to track the causes and effects of these publications prepared on the eve of budgetary decisions and official responses, which state nothing particular but still form a certain attitude to this situation. It seems that to have such an unpopular measure as increasing military spending passed it is necessary to intimidate everyone again and unite MPs by daunting them with a foe - Russia."
Zakharova believes that the De Telegraaf article story is a clear example of media propaganda that NATO and EU institutes in Brussels are ever so actively countering. "First, it is clear that intelligence services help to "leak" information that Russians are allegedly intimidating wives of Dutch pilots to the newspaper," she explained the scheme of propaganda campaigns designed in the West.
Zakharova continued that this is followed by politicization of the story, involving an "official investigation" and follow-up responses. "And what do we see in the official response? Absolute lack of any facts that link the story to Russia, but propaganda instruments are doing everything possible to tie Russia to this story, mentioning its alleged past destructive behavior and so on," she concluded. "The story has come the full circle. There’s an enormous amount, a multitude of these propaganda circles.".