NATO’s CCD Escalates Drive To Target Opponents of War as ‘Infoterrorists’

Sept. 2, 2022 (EIRNS)—On Sept. 1 and 2, representatives of NATO, the U.S. State Department and other European nations gathered again in Kiev under the auspices of the Ukraine presidency’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) and its now-notorious Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), to accelerate their plans to impose dictatorial thought-control over the globe, in the name of fighting “Russian disinformation.” This is precisely the operation which EIR has demanded be shut down in its just-released dossier, titled “Kiev’s ‘Info Terrorist’ List: ‘Global NATO’ Orders a Hit on Advocates of Peace.”

The occasion was an international roundtable on “Combatting Disinformation in the Conditions of Military Operations.” (in Ukrainian) The CCD reports ambassadors and representatives of 24 countries took part, and named 18 of the participants. Among the names released were those of two “senior experts” from NATO’s Strategic Communications Center, and diplomats and “experts” from the U.S., France, Germany, Sweden, Poland and Canada, as well as the Baltic nations.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and CCD acting head Andriy Shapovalov hosted. Shapovalov set the terms for debate: “Today, our goal is to form an international hub for countering information threats at the national and international level,” he announced. He insisted that international law must recognize “infoterrorism” as a crime, and anyone committing such a crime be declared an “information terrorist” and subjected to measures such as are applied to actual terrorists. “Only in this way will we be able to effectively protect Ukrainians and citizens of partner states from information crimes, in particular, information terrorism,” Shapovalov pronounced, according to the summary reports published by the CCD and the NSDC.

Danilov called the “information front” as important in winning war as fighting on the battlefield. He stated outright that the CCD had been created in preparation for the war they were planning. “We understood in advance that there would be a war; that’s why in March 2021, the Center for Countering Disinformation was created by Presidential Decree,” he said. (A few days earlier, Danilov had reported that Ukraine—and thus its NATO backers—began preparing for war in December 2019.)

The CCD asserted that everyone present agreed, reporting in its release that “the parties emphasized that information terrorism is actually as real as ordinary terrorism and has no less consequences.”

The NSDC reported (in Ukranian) briefly on what only a few of foreign speakers had said, but that did include remarks by U.S. Embassy Public Relations officer Robert Post who appears gung-ho on the project. “The G7 countries, in particular, the U.S.A., together with the Ukrainian authorities, are actively fighting against Russian propaganda and disinformation,” he stressed.

Canadian Embassy First Secretary Molly Graham described Ottawa’s attempts to control the press, by “ ‘focusing a lot of effort’ on conducting training for journalists on countering disinformation,” because “democratic” countries understand that “propaganda and disinformation” threaten “freedom of thought.”

The head of operations of Sweden’s new Psychological Protection Agency Mikael Tofvesson, was all in, waxing equally Orwellian in his enthusiasm over how “our struggle is aimed at building a free democratic society where there is no place for propaganda and misinformation, but only freedom of speech and pluralism of opinion.”

Various foreign speakers held up Ukraine—where the CCD, among other agencies, is charged with issuing “blacklists” and “hit lists” against any dissidents from the official line—as a model “to the whole world of an effective countermeasure against disinformation.”

NSDC included a release on the remarks of CCD head Andriy Shapovalov, (in Ukranian) whose name first gained currency when he announced the release on July 14 of CCD’s hit list.