US To Share Classified Intelligence Of Russian 'False Flag' Plans To Justify Ukraine Invasion

The United States is prepared to share classified intelligence on Thursday that offers details into a false-flag operation being prepared by Russia to justify an invasion of Ukraine. This revelation follows earlier warnings from Washington that Moscow would rely on a fabricated incident as a pretext to invade.

According to unnamed sources cited by the Washington Post, Russian intelligence operatives are working on a video that will show what they will claim is a Ukrainian military attack that resulted in serious casualties. They explained that the Biden administration’s hopes to delay any final decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin on whether to invade Ukraine by making this revelation public, forcing his planners to concoct a fresh plan.

To make the video more believable, officials told the New York Times that paid actors would be used to play mourners of the victims of the faked attack and that military equipment would be masked to appear like they belong to Ukraine. Going further, the officials said that Turkish military drones would be displayed in the video and that the planners have gone so far as to find the corpses they will use to simulate the victims of the fake attack.

British officials also told the Times that they had done their own analysis of the intelligence and had high confidence that Russia was planning to engineer a scenario that will allow them to invade Ukraine. The United Kingdom has provided strong backing to Ukraine throughout the crisis and forwarded its own assessment that accused Russia of seeking the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in favor of a puppet ruler. Russia slammed the report as “disinformation” and called on London to “stop spreading nonsense.”

For months, the United States and NATO have warned that Russia may be planning to invade Ukraine as they mass over 100,000 troops along its borders. The White House has said that an attack could happen by mid-February, but Russia denies that it has any intention to attack Ukraine. Instead, Moscow accuses Washington of whipping up hysteria against it with President Vladimir Putin saying that the pressure was aimed at containing his country. More recently, the United States has walked back claims of an "imminent" Russian invasion after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said it was uncertain whether or not Putin has made a final decision yet.

Diplomatic talks to reach a settlement to the ongoing crisis have produced scant results. However, both Western nations and Russia have agreed to continue their discussions, something that has earned Putin’s blessing on Monday.

The use of deception operations is a time-honed technique for the Russian military and intelligence alike, and the U.S has already accused Russia of plotting a false-flag attack to justify an invasion. However, some analysts were reserved in their reaction to the news of the spoofed video.

Aric Toler, a researcher at the open-source intelligence outlet Bellingcat which is reviled by Russian authorities for their exposes on Kremlin-related assassinations in Europe, called the claims “ambitious”. Pointing to past instances of fakes linked to Russian actors being used to malign Ukraine, Toler pointed out that many have been crudely constructed and not particularly sophisticated.

“I'm just saying that I'm skeptical that any false flag video would be anything close to convincing, based on literally every time they've tried to do this over the past 7 years,” Toler wrote on Twitter.