The US has information indicating that Russia has positioned a group of agents to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine, according to a US official’s report to the CNN on Friday (14th). The intention would be to create a pretext for an invasion.
The source stated that the United States has evidence that agents are trained in urban warfare and in the use of explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against its own forces representing Russia.
The claim matches what was revealed by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry on Friday. According to the ministry statement, Russian special services are preparing provocative actions against Russian forces themselves in an attempt to blame Ukraine.
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US National Security Adviser Jaime Sullivan also hinted at the same during a briefing with reporters on Thursday.
“Our intelligence community has obtained information now supported by other sources that Russia is laying the groundwork to have the pretext for an invasion,” Sullivan said Thursday.
“We saw this roadmap in 2014. They are preparing the same roadmap again and we will have, the government will have, more details about what we see as a potential imposition of pretext. And we will share this with the press over the next 24 hours.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that “military units of the aggressor country and its satellites are ordered to prepare for such provocations.”
The conclusion of the US intelligence services comes after a week of diplomatic meetings between Russian and Western officials that dealt with the concentration of tens of thousands of Russian military personnel along Ukraine’s border. But the talks failed to make any progress, as Russia did not commit to lessening the pressure and US and NATO representatives said that Moscow’s demands (including that NATO never admit Ukraine into the alliance) were not feasible.
Several Ukrainian government websites were hit by a cyberattack on Friday, which European officials saw as a further increase in tensions in the region.
The US official said the Biden administration believed Russia could be preparing an invasion of Ukraine “that could result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes if diplomacy fails to achieve its objectives”.
“The Russian military begins planning activities several weeks before a military invasion, which could start between mid-January and mid-February,” he said. “We saw the same script in 2014 with Crimea.”
At the time, agents with Russian influence began to garner support from their people for an intervention, the source said. To this end, they emphasized narratives about the deterioration of human rights in Ukraine and the increase in militancy of Ukrainian leaders.
“During December, Russian linguistic content on social media, spanning the three main narratives, rose to an average of nearly 3,500 posts per day, up 200% from the daily average in November,” he explained.
US, NATO and European officials held high-level meetings this week with Russian counterparts. At the end of Thursday’s three meetings, both parties came out pessimistic. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister suggested that the talks had reached a “dead end” and had not seen any reason to continue with the meetings. Already a top US official warned that the “war drums were already sounding loud” after the diplomatic sessions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that Russia believes NATO will increase its activity along the Ukrainian border if Moscow does not comply with Western demands.
“While our proposals aim to reduce military confrontation, to de-escalate the situation in Europe as a whole, precisely the opposite is happening in the West. NATO members are building their strength and strengthening aviation. In the territories directly neighboring Ukraine, on the Black Sea, the scale of the exercises has increased many times recently,” said Lavrov.
On Friday, several Ukrainian government websites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were targeted by a cyberattack with ominous text that warned Ukrainians to “fear and expect the worst”. Ukraine’s government said it appeared that Russia was behind the attack.
A US National Security Council source said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the attack. The source said the US still had no one to blame for the attack, but would “provide Ukraine with whatever support it needs for recovery”.
Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell condemned the cyberattack, warning of the “already tense situation” in the region.
When asked whether Russian government or non-government actors were behind the attacks, Borrell replied that while he didn’t want to “point fingers”, there was “a certain probability where they came from”.
James Frater, Joseph Ataman and Niamh Kennedy CNN contributed to this report
This content was originally created in English.
original version
Reference: CNN Brasil
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