The Russian pretext for invading Ukraine

 John Sexton:

Nearly three weeks ago US intelligence claimed it had information on Russia’s plan for a false flag attack which it would use to justify an invasion of Ukraine. But at the time the details of the Russian plan weren’t revealed.

Today, the NY Times reports details of the plan are being revealed in an attempt to spoil the effort. The plan was to create an incendiary video.

The plan — which the United States hopes to spoil by making public — involves staging and filming a fabricated attack by the Ukrainian military either on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.

Russia, the officials said, intended to use the video to accuse Ukraine of genocide against Russian-speaking people. It would then use the outrage over the video to justify an attack or have separatist leaders in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine invite a Russian intervention…

The video was intended to be elaborate, officials said, with plans for graphic images of the staged, corpse-strewn aftermath of an explosion and footage of destroyed locations. They said the video was also set to include faked Ukrainian military equipment, Turkish-made drones and actors playing Russian-speaking mourners…

After the congressional briefing, Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Russia was in the process of producing movies and other “false proof” that Ukraine was doing something to provoke Moscow. It is important, he said, “that the world understands that this is a false operation to try to justify them in an invasion.”

US intelligence isn’t revealing how they know the details of the plan but the NY Times story points out that the UK is also backing up this claim. In addition, the Times says this plan seems to jibe with a strain of propaganda which state media in Russia has been pushing for several months.

...

I suspect intelligence operations uncovered some of the actual production of the false flag videos.  Putin's irrational fear of the spread of NATO may have led to the pretense of a causus belli.  To date they have never really explained one.

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