Parker called on the international community to work “to shine a light through the fog of lies, half-truths and obfuscation that pours out of their propaganda machine.”

In recent months alone, Russia has been accused of conducting the aforementioned assassination attempt on UK soil using a Cold War era nerve agent known as novichok, as well as working to aid Bashar al Assad’s attempts at covering up Syria’s use of banned chemical weapons against civilians inside rebel controlled portions of the nation. Russia has been providing Assad’s Syrian regime with direct military support throughout its ongoing civil war and the international endeavor to route out ISIS, but was also tasked with ensuring Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons had been destroyed.

Following the most recent allegations of chemical weapons use, the United States, UK, and France launched a joint air strike offensive on three targets alleged to be integral components of Syria’s chemical weapons infrastructure. Russia has since launched a multi-faceted media campaign aiming to shift the narrative away from the use of chemical weapons at all, instead claiming that the Soviet era missile defense systems in place throughout Syria managed to intercept the vast majority of inbound missiles — a claim refuted by national defense agencies as well as commercial satellite images.

Russia went further, to claim that they had captured two failed missiles, which they were shipping back to Moscow in an attempt to bolster their own cruise missile technology. Eric Pahon, Pentagon spokesman, said at the time,

This is another example of the Russian disinformation campaign to distract attention from their moral complicity to the Assad Regime’s atrocities and the civilian carnage in western Syria … On the Tomahawk, we have seen no proof, other than statements made to Russian state-owned media, that their claims are true. This is likely another smoke screen of propaganda to distract from the real issue at hand — the murder of innocent civilians by a murderous regime propped up by Russian backing.”

Parker echoed the sentiments of the Pentagon in his address, though he did temper his statements with an acknowledgement that Russia has the opportunity to rebound from the geopolitical course their on and work their way back into international cooperation, though they seem disinterested in doing so. He said,

One of the Kremlin’s central and entirely admirable aims is to build Russian greatness on the world stage, but its repeated choices have been to pursue that aim through aggressive and pernicious actions by its military and intelligence services … Instead of becoming a respected great nation it risks becoming a more isolated pariah.”

Image courtesy of the Associated Press