The Biden administration has information indicating Russia might soon launch a false-flag operation to provide a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine, a U.S. official told POLITICO.
Per the official, Russia has already placed a group of operatives “trained in urban warfare and in using explosives” in eastern Ukraine. The intel suggests that this group might “carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy-forces,” thereby providing the Kremlin a convenient excuse to send some or all of its 100,000 troops stationed outside of Ukraine over the border
The Russian military plans to start these activities “several weeks” before a potential invasion, which is estimated to begin sometime between mid-January and mid-February, the official continued. “We saw this playbook in 2014 with Crimea.”
CNN first reported on the obtained intelligence.
Top U.S. officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in recent days previewed that the U.S. had information suggesting that Moscow was setting the groundwork for another incursion.
“Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for an invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House Thursday, promising the administration would share more details within the following 24 hours.
The revelation comes after a week of talks in Europe between the United States, its allies and Russia. Little progress was made, leading officials to express their pessimism out in the open. “At the present time, we’re facing a crisis in European security,” Michael Carpenter, America’s ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters Thursday. “The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill.”
This is the last thing we need. By we , I mean the world.
I don’t think there will be a wider war over this. I hope. But it’s pretty clear to me that Russia is making these moves at least partly because the division in the US and Europe makes it far less likely that anyone will step in strongly to stop it. Obviously he is driven by his own domestic needs and goals more than anything else and they are not hidden. But it doesn’t help that the rest of the west is in domestic political chaos. These are the circumstances that make aggressive people make mistakes.
By the way, contrary to what some people are saying, the Ukrainians are not welcoming this:
“Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine has a large Russian population, but opinion has turned against Russia since the Kemlin stirred up a separatist war in the nearby Donbas and is threatening invasion. [….]
You know, I came here expecting to find pro-Russian sentiment in the east, and I haven’t seen that at all, Ari. To the contrary, there are Ukrainian flags everywhere. And in front of the town hall and the Christmas market, there’s a big exhibit about Russian aggression. There’s, like, pictures showing Putin with a Hitler mustache and signs talking about boycotting Russian products.
And people here even tell me that they’re making an effort now to speak Ukrainian, whereas before everyone mostly always spoke Russian. [….]”
Sooo… this could get very ugly.