Disinformation, or the planting of false information to deceive or smear an enemy, is now being regularly used by both government and non-governmental players in Russia and Ukraine in the fierce battles for control of power and assets in these countries. During the January 2009 "gas war" between Ukraine and Russia, the Russian leadership accused Ukraine of preventing Russian gas from reaching customers in the E.U. The charges were shown to be blatantly false, but were repeated by Russian spokesmen in order to discredit Ukraine as a gas transit country, while building up support within Europe for the North Stream and South Stream pipeline projects. In what might have been a possible retaliation for this, Ukraine launched its own stealth campaign, claiming that the Russian consulate in the Crimea was handing out Russian passports to Russians living in the peninsula. Ukraine was never able to prove these charges, but the idea took hold and many Ukrainians seemed convinced that these "passports" were meant to stir up the Crimean population and were a prelude to the forcible separation of Crimea from Ukraine by Russian armed might.