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One of Russia’s greatest successes in its information war over Ukraine has been its ability to portray NATO as a party to the conflict. 

This paper examines the extent to which NATO was involved in the conflict, the attempts Russia made to craft a narrative which would justify the annexation of Crimea, and the ways in which that narrative changed during the early stages of the conflict, until it fixed the blame on NATO retrospectively, four months after the pro-EU demonstrations in Kiev began.