In a surprising turn of events, Russia struck back at the US and the western media disinformation campaign, causing NATO to back off  from claiming that Russia or Syria was responsible for the attack on the Red Crescent aid convoy destroyed earlier this week. This became evident after the public statement of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday, September 21, in comments to media following an ad-hoc meeting with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov.

Western media outlets previously reported, both through AP and Reuters distributors like the New York Times, LA Times, etc., as well as the UK’s Guardian and BBC, that US officials laid the blame on Russia for the attack on the Red Crescent aid convoy in Syria. The attack destroyed nearly twenty of the thirty-one trucks scheduled to arrive in Uram Al-Kubra.

Reuters apparently broke the US version of events, duplicitously citing two conveniently anonymous military sources, claiming that:

“Two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the skies above an aid convoy in Syria at the precise time it was struck on Monday, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday, citing U.S. intelligence that has led them to conclude Russia was to blame.” – Reuters, September 19th, 2016. 

The same article went on to claim in conclusion that: “The strike appeared to deal a fatal blow to Syria’s fragile week-old ceasefire.”

On September 20th, the Guardian ran with the headline “Russian planes dropped bombs that destroyed UN aid convoy, US officials say”.

These indicate an intention on the part of the US to spin this event, placing blame on Russia both for the attack on the aid convoy and also for the collapsed ceasefire, in the first hours and days after the convoy attack, as part of a public disinformation campaign to create that ever-important first impression in the public mind’s eye.

As a matter of record, it was the planned US and ISIS joint attack on the Syrian Arab Army forces at Deir ez-Zor on September 17th, 2016, that led to the Syrian government unilaterally calling off the ceasefire hours before the attack on the Red Crescent convoy. The diplomatic crisis was compounded by the ‘heavy handed’ and ‘unprofessional’ ( in the words of Russia’s UN rep, Churkin,) approach of the US’s UN representative Samantha Power at an emergency session of the UN Security Council.

Therefore, the western media focus on the aid caravan attack seems to be aimed at deflecting blame on the collapsed ceasefire away from the US, and diverting public attention onto a more recent news story – this is in line with the use of the ‘recency effect‘ in psychology. Human memories are not recording devices, and the public is prone to remember things based cues and references independent of reality.

Several narratives and events, in the chronological order below, are important to understand as the story unfolded.

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1. The Reuters and AP, pieces set the Atlanticist media tone and gave all derivative media their talking points with a clear angle to follow.  In this version, media reported that US officials ‘knew’ who carried out the attack: Russia. The Guardian was a degree more cautious, both citing the Reuters piece which ‘cited’ the anonymous US military sources but also included their own follow up with the White House and found that: “The White House and state department said they could not confirm the allegations, while the Russian foreign ministry rejected them with “resentment and indignation”.”

2. The UN’s initial statement that the destruction of the convoy was a result of ‘air strikes’ seemed to all but confirm that Russian or Syrian air forces were responsible, within the context of the publicly pronounced presumption that there were no US air forces present at the time.

3. The UN then suddenly reversed its official statement, and withdrew its assessment that the destruction was caused by ‘air strikes’ and deferred the matter to pending investigation. One can only speculate what caused this sudden reversal, but it appears likely this was a diplomatic success on the part of Russia, which at any rate could have only led to great confusion on the part of the US as to what Russia’s coming prepared response was going to be.

4. Russia released aerial footage of the aid caravan, also showing an off-road vehicle towing a large caliber mortar. This was an interesting twist, and laid the potential for Russia to deny attacking the convoy while publicly presenting an understandable reason why it would be legitimate to attack it. Aid caravans have long been suspected by all sides as a way to cloak the transport or import of military equipment.  Russia has publicly stated that its position is that the Caravan ‘caught fire’, using the passive tense in textual construction, and not indicating necessarily ‘who’, if anyone ‘set’ this fire, or if it was a random accident caused by heat, or even possibly the existence of munitions being smuggled in to aid US backed enemy combatants.

5. Russia went public with its intel, providing back up evidence to confirm, that a US predator drone was overhead in the skies at the same time as the attack. At the same time, it says that the cause of the loss of about 2/3rds of the aid caravan (18 of 31 trucks) was the result of ‘fire’.

6. Public analysts and watchdog journalists across the internet, such as 21Wire, noticed that several of the released photographs of the damaged trucks indicated evidence of small weapons fire, and noted a lack of the sort of craters or blast marks that would be consistent with either shelling or an aerial attack. While this sort of ‘remote forensics by photography’ is useful in the public discourse, and even critical in some cases such as MH17, it is not conclusive in cases of a larger area of attack, because photographs in circulation were not taken with the intention of documenting the entire scene from several angles with the aim of seeking out conclusive evidence. Nevertheless, the possibilities raised are still present, and independent journalism surrounding this stands as an important contribution to public awareness

7. Lavrov met with Stoltenberg, in an ad-hoc meeting at the sidelines of the UN’s 71st General Assembly, the details of which are presently unknown to the public. Based upon the following, it would appear that the exchange of data entailed more than what Russia went public with. We of course can only speculate that there may have been some direct evidence of the predator drone making the attack. Or perhaps there is aerial footage of a shelling from the direction of rebel held areas. The release of several perhaps conflicting narratives from Russia and the independent media sphere have created the likelihood that any one of these versions may be correct.

8. Stoltenberg, a named source, in his position as the result of what is effectively a US appointment,  publicly stated that he will “not speculate on who carried out the attack“, which is a decisively different position than what was expressed through Western media, in an original Reuters story citing unnamed sources from the US military. The meaning of this is tremendous in terms of the public discourse. In an RT story in connection with this, they included the following:

“Moscow, however, strongly denied it had played any part in the atrocity, while calling it “another unacceptable provocation.”

“On Wednesday, Lavrov confirmed that Russia had provided all data related to the incident for investigation, and pointed out that the timing of the attack coincided with the large militant offensive in the 1070 district of Aleppo.”

“Lavrov and his American counterpart, John Kerry, are expected to meet face-to-face for the second time since the start of the UN General Assembly session on Wednesday evening, a Russian delegation source told RIA Novosti.”

9. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov today has just said  that there was an explosion at the caravan, and that the US’s use of a predator drone is documented, which it is prepared to reveal to the public. But it is critical, very critical, to note here that the spokesman does not exactly connect the dots explicitly, which leaves upon some important openings listed below.

10. As a result, a number of possibly contradictory public and official theories have surfaced, all however which tend to shift blame away from the Russian or Syrian forces. This is a compelling development, as both sides seek dominance in the information war.