Russiagate only tip of iceberg in Western demonization of Russia – expert

Western powers have artificially stoked anti-Russia sentiment since the late ‘90s as NATO expanded eastward, Oliver Boyd Barrett says

US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s revelations about the role of former President Barack Obama’s administration in the Russiagate scandal are “shocking,” but they expose only the surface of a broader Western anti-Russia campaign, Professor Oliver Boyd-Barrett has told RT.

On Friday, Gabbard released newly declassified documents describing a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials – led by Obama himself – to falsely accuse Donald Trump of colluding with Russia during the 2016 election. The documents indicate that Obama ordered officials to discard intelligence assessments that found no Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign and replace them with claims blaming Moscow based on fabricated data. The scandal led to the years-long Trump-Russia probe known as ‘Russiagate.’

“This is an extraordinary moment, that the head of intelligence in the US has made such a bold, in some ways shocking, statement of the truth,” Boyd-Barrett, a professor at Bowling Green State University and author of an in-depth study of Russiagate, said on Saturday. He noted the moment was especially striking as Gabbard called for prosecution of those involved in what she described as a “coup” attempt.

Read more

Trump endorses Gabbard’s ‘Russiagate’ coup claims

Boyd-Barrett, however, emphasized that to “fully comprehend” Russiagate, it must be viewed as only a small part of a broader Western campaign to demonize Russia, “that goes decades back.”

“It’s part of a much deeper agenda – we’re talking Russia narrative… the broader context of an anti-Russian campaign that was stoked artificially around the time of the late 90s when the West had so clearly decided that NATO was going to move eastwards regardless of whatever anyone in Russia or anyone in the US had to say,” he said. He also warned against reducing Russiagate to a personal political ploy, noting that blaming it solely on Obama or Hillary Clinton’s election anxiety is “too simple an explanation.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in the US electoral process.