U.S. officials on Feb. 3 partly declassified intelligence that claims Russia is planning a false flag operation as an excuse to further invade Ukraine. Some details of the alleged plot are all too familiar to battle-hardened Ukraine, which has seen similar scenarios throughout its ongoing 8-year-war with Russia.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was notified of the possible operation, he said in a briefing on Feb. 3.
“In principle, what was made public does not surprise us,” Kuleba said. “Since 2014 we have seen a lot of insidious actions by the Russian Federation.”
In briefings, the Pentagon and State Department confirmed earlier media reports the same day that one option Moscow is considering is the alleged use of “a very graphic propaganda video” involving “crisis actors pretending to be mourners” alongside damaged “NATO” hardware to implicate the West.
A circular disseminated to media by a senior White House official said:
“As we have said publicly on a number of occasions, we have developed information that Russia is likely to fabricate a pretext for an invasion. There are a number of options they have developed.“
No evidence was provided for the alleged operation described during the briefings given by State Department spokesperson Ned Price and his Defense Department counterpart John Kirby.
Russia has denied plans to further invade Ukraine, which it first did in early 2014 by forcibly seizing the Crimean Peninsula and subsequently leading an armed uprising in the two easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk resulting in the occupation of 3% of those territories.
The war in eastern Ukraine has killed 14,000 people and displaced at least a million more, causing the largest internal migration of people on continental Europe since World War II. The Russo-Ukrainian war is the only current, bloody war in Europe.
In addition to having permanent forces in the Donbas and Crimea, Russia has amassed some 130,000 well-equipped soldiers near Ukraine’s state border, sparking fears of a larger-scaler war beyond the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
An estimated 30,000 Russian troops and an array of sophisticated military hardware has also been deployed to neighboring Belarus where 10-day joint drills are scheduled to commence on Feb. 10.
At least six Western embassies, including the United States, have started trimming their non-core staff and urged private citizens in Ukraine to leave the country amid the menace of full-blown warfare.
Additional details of the operation was given by Kirby of the Defense Department who said that a “fake attack” would be staged by falsely portraying “Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory or against Russian-speaking people,” which would in turn provide a ruse for further military inroads into Ukraine.
“This is one of a number of options Russia has developed, and we are publicizing it in the hopes that it dissuades Russia from its intended course of action,” Kirby said.
At the State Department, Price said evidence was withheld “with an eye to protecting sources and methods.”
Russian disinformation in Ukraine
Kyiv-based media watchdog Stop Fake told the Kyiv Post that the use of doctored videos in combination with implanted actors is a toolbox component of Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign against Ukraine.
Founded in 2014 at the height of the pro-democratic Euromaidan Revolution, the watchdog has flagged thousands of fake Russian media reports over the years to fit its narrative that Ukraine is run by ultranationalists, is a failed state and beholden to Western powers.
What U.S. intelligence uncovered “seems plausible because Russia has done this many times before…as one of many varieties to push its war narrative to the next level,” said Yevehen Fedchenko, chief editor of Stop Fake and head of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s school of journalism.
By the time Russia had taken over the Crimea, a “barrage of disinformation” already provided “a wealth of ‘evidence’ to help Moscow justify” it, the Washington-based Wilson Quarterly journal wrote in 2018.
Preceding and after the invasion of Ukraine’s peninsula, “Russian propaganda” alleged Ukrainian nationalist politician Oleh Tyahnybok of wanting “the Russian language banned” and to prohibit “Russians becoming citizens” of Ukraine.
The use of actors in fake Russian news reports is also not uncommon in Ukraine, Fedchenko told the Kyiv Post in an audio interview.
Perhaps the most notorious report is by Russian state Channel One channel from 2014 at the outset of Russia’s covert invasion of eastern Ukraine.
It stated that Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk regional city of “Slovyansk had crucified a three-year-old boy in front of his mother in the center of town” before tying her to an armored tank and dragging her through the city, the Wilson Quarterly said.
The woman interviewed in the video claiming to be a “refugee” turned out to be an actor. She called herself Galina Pyshniak and was married to a pro-Russian collaborator, BBC reported.
Russian journalists from Novaya Gazeta debunked the report in 24 hours, but not before the report spread “inciting hatred against Ukrainians,” the European Union’s EU vs Disinfo project stated.
A Ukrainian woman played as many five different roles in various settings, according previous Kyiv Post dispatches and reports by British media.
Starting in early during the Euromaidan movement in Kyiv, Tetyana Samoilenko portrayed herself as a soldier’s mother in Kyiv. In Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, she was seen with a Russian flag wrapped around her body. In the Black Sea coastal city of Odesa, she posed as a housewife.
Ukrainian media outlets say she also appeared in protests in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol and Norocherkassk in Russia, British tabloid The Daily Mail reported.
“She regularly appeals for Russian help for pro-Moscow Ukrainians, it has been claimed, and speaks of persecution in her country, leading to claims she is a warrior in Putin's propaganda army,” the newspaper said.
Britain’s false flag warning
The British foreign secretary released a statement on Jan. 22 saying that Russia is planning to overthrow the government in Kyiv.
“We have information that indicates the Russian Government is looking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv as it considers whether to invade and occupy Ukraine,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. “The former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev is being considered as a potential candidate.”
Murayev, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2019, denied the Kremlin wants to place him in charge in the Ukrainian capital.
He called himself a “patriot” while saying “Russia has another candidate and it is not hiding who that person is,” Murayev said without specifying in an interview with British newspaper The Telegraph.
Adding that the British allegations are “absurd,” the Nashi (Ours) Party founder and leader said in his defense that he has been subject to Russian sanctions since 2018.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, did say Murayev is part of Russia’s “fifth column” in a separate interview with the Ukrainian service of BBC on Jan. 24.
“We are fully aware of who Muraev is, [and] other representatives of the Russian Federation, who are not named by British intelligence, we are clearly aware of the names, the patronymics of these people… We are clearly aware of what the fifth column is, what it does,” Danilov said.
