In response to the mounting pressure from the Moscow protests, Kremlin authorities have doubled down on unsubstantiated accusations of foreign interference in Russia’s domestic affairs.

On August 19, 2019, the State Duma announced the creation of an inter-factional commission to investigate foreign interference in the domestic affairs of the Russian Federation. Even though all four Duma factions — United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and Fair Russia — supported the initiative, authorities lacked substantial evidence to accuse the United States and Germany in meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs.

The chairman of the State Duma’s lower chamber, Viacheslav Volodin, outlined the rationale for establishing the committee: “We see how state channels of a number of countries voice statements such as, ‘Get up, Moscow!’, summons, indications of [protest] gathering places. All of this confirms interference in the affairs of the Russian Federation. We cannot allow this. That is why it was decided to create a State Duma Commission.”

The commission arises, perhaps, as a real world manifestation of the Kremlin’s proclivity for distraction and appeals to hypocrisy. The DFRLab previously examined how pro-Kremlin media pushed false claims that the U.S. Embassy in Russia had incited, and even orchestrated, the protests. In addition to reinforcing this narrative, the Kremlin introduced two new narratives: the first alleged that German newspaper Deutche Welle (DW) incited people via social media to join the protests; the second claimed that the United States had planted covert agents among the protesters to aid them in dealing with law enforcement. These claims of foreign interference had no basis in fact; but the Kremlin nonetheless used them to discredit the protests and justify its harsh crackdown on the protesters.

Deutsche Welle did not incite the protests

DW, the German public international broadcaster, has come under criticism from pro-Kremlin authorities for its coverage of the protests. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explicitly accused the German outlet of interfering in Russia’s affairs.

On July 27, DW’s Russian service posted a tweet that included a video of protesters marching in Moscow. The video was accompanied by the quote, “Moscow, come out!”

Russian authorities interpreted the tweet as an incitement to protest. Later that same day, shortly after the tweet appeared, Russian riot police briefly detained DW journalist Sergey Dik while he was covering a violent crackdown by the police at an opposition rally.

DW’s tweet, reading: “- Moscow, come out! No, it doesn’t seem to be over yet. And the policeman deliberately pushed our correspondent with his shoulder during the shooting (he managed to group).” Protesters are chanting: “Moscow, come out!” (Source: DW/archive via Twitter)

The DW tweet in question, however, did not call for people to join the protests; it simply quoted the protesters’ chants. Throughout the 23-second long video, the protesters can be heard chanting: “Moscow, come out!” The accompanying text in the tweet started with a hyphen, which in Russian may be used to indicate a quote as an alternative to using quotation marks. DW’s Russian service has used this convention in other instances to indicate direct speech, indicating that it may just be the outlet’s in-house style.