US intel suggests Russia preparing 'false-flag' operation for possible Ukraine invasion

In a shocking intel, the United States on Friday found that Russia has prepositioned operatives to conduct a “false-flag operation” in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria in eastern Ukraine in order to create a pretext of invasion of Kyiv. Pentagon Press Secretary, John Kirby, at a press conference on Jan 14 confirmed that the State Department received information that indicates that Russia “is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion.” This came just hours after the Ukrainian government websites were hit by a “massive cyber attack”.

Earlier this week, the bilateral talks between Russia and the US about the de-escalation of tensions at the border with Kyiv failed as NATO refused commitment to Kremlin’s draft treaties that sought security guarantees. Russia has concentrated more than 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border and has demanded US and NATO guarantees for the alliance to halt its eastward expansion, which Russia labels as a threat to its own national security.

Kirby on Wednesday confirmed that Moscow plans to achieve their invasion agenda as they have in the past in 2014 when they annexed Crimea,  by pre-positioning a group of operatives to conduct, what Pentagon believes, a false flag operation. This is designed to look like an attack on Russian troops first which will be followed by a full-fledged invasion by Moscow into Ukraine.

US intel 'very credible'

“Russian influence actors are already starting. They're already starting to fabricate Ukrainian provocations that -- in both state and social media to, again, try to justify in advance some sort of pretext for the incursion,” Pentagon Press Secretary, John Kirby, said on Friday. He, however, added that the US State Department still believes that there's time and space for diplomacy. He then iterated that in case of the invasion, the US will provide security assistance to Ukraine to help defend themselves. Whilst Kirby did not go into details of the operation, he insisted, “by the fact that we can say this as confidently as you can take away that there's a fidelity here to the information that we have that we believe is -- is very credible.” 

The US National security adviser Jake Sullivan, also separately told a presser, ”Our intelligence community has developed information, which has now been downgraded, that Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating the pretext for an invasion.” Sullivan continued, ”We saw this playbook in 2014. They are preparing this playbook again."

Russia will frame Ukraine 'an aggressor' in the crisis

Meanwhile, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki added that the US intelligence findings show that Russia is laying the groundwork through a social media disinformation campaign that would frame Ukraine as an aggressor in the crisis. She then added that Russia has already dispatched operatives trained in urban warfare that are suspected of using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces, which Moscow would later blame on Kyiv. Russian special services were planning the possible false flag incident to provoke additional conflict and use it as an excuse for the incursion. 

“We’ve seen this kind of thing before out of Russia when there isn’t an actual crisis to suit their needs. They’ll make one up,” Kirby, speaking alongside Psaki, stressed. The US intelligence findings, which are declassified, were shared with US allies before being made public, according to multiple reports. It suggests that Russia could start a military invasion into Ukraine between mid-January and mid-February.

“One could imagine, right, that an attack like that is meant to disrupt capability to try to dissuade action, to try to change the behaviours of the leadership decisions inside Ukraine. I mean, any number of reasons, not to mention just to intimidate,” said Kirby. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko, meanwhile, separately told Associated Press about the cyberattack, stressing that it was too soon to say who was behind it. “But there is a long record of Russian cyber assaults against Ukraine in the past,” he stated.