On Thursday, the Biden administration reportedly said that Russia is preparing to “fabricate a pretext for an invasion” of Ukraine by creating “a very graphic propaganda video” that would show a fake attack by Ukraine on Russia.
According to Defense Department Press Secretary John Kirby, the United States believes that the Russian government “is planning to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory or against Russian-speaking people” in order to create false reasoning for an invasion.
“As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment at the hands of Ukraine or the West, even to the point where some of this equipment would be made to look like it was Western supplied … to Ukraine equipment,” Kirby said.
The Washington Post, who first reported the story, wrote, “The Russian disinformation effort would be ‘right out of their playbook,’ Kirby said, noting that most activity of that nature is approved at the highest levels of the Russian government. Kirby said the Biden administration felt it was important, upon learning of such plans, ‘to call it out.’”
“The allegations by the Biden administration were met with pushback due to the lack of specificity and evidence. At a briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price was asked repeatedly if the United States would provide evidence supporting the alleged Russian plot. He declined to do so, citing the need to protect intelligence sources and methods,” The Washington Post added.
When asked about the level of confidence the Biden administration has in the information, State Department spokesman Ned Price explained that “this is derived from intelligence in which we have confidence … otherwise we would not be making it public in the way we are.” He added that the United States does not know if Russia will end up using the video, but the United States’ announcement was designed to prevent it from happening.
The news comes a few weeks after the Biden administration first revealed it had information indicating Russia had “prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine” in order to set the stage for an invasion.
According to CNN, a U.S. official said at the time that the United States “has evidence that the operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces… The Russian military plans to begin these activities several weeks before a military invasion, which could begin between mid-January and mid-February. We saw this playbook in 2014 with Crimea.”