On Friday, the Biden administration revealed it has information indicating that Russia has “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 a new report from CNN.
CNN reported that a U.S. official said the U.S. “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.”
During a press briefing on Thursday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan likewise compared the situation to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.
“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 said. “We saw this playbook in 2014. They are preparing this playbook again and we will have, the administration will have, further details on what we see as this potential laying of the pretext to share with the press over the course of the next 24 hours.”
A reporter asked Sullivan, “Is Russia trying to justify an invasion, if one happens?”
“I’m not going to put myself in the head of the Russians,” Sullivan replied. “As you see from their public comments, they’ve been — they’ve said many different things. Some of them contradictory. They’ve — different speakers over the course of this week have given both hopeful signs and deeply pessimistic signs. You’ll have to ask them where they stand in respect to their positioning. From our perspective, we can just be clear about where we stand. And where we stand is ready to go down a principled path of diplomacy and ready to respond in the face of aggression.”
“Ambassador Michael Carpenter is offering a different assessment. I’m sure you heard him say that, ‘The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill. So, do you agree with that or disagree?” Another reporter asked.
“Well, the Russians have put tens of thousands of troops in and around Ukraine and occupied territory relative to Ukraine,” Sullivan replied. “So, it is certainly the case that the threat of military invasion is high.”
On Friday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement that “the military units of the aggressor country and its satellites receive orders to prepare for such provocations.”
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has denied that Russia was preparing for an invasion of Ukraine.
“So far, all these statements have been unfounded and have not been confirmed by anything,” Peskov claimed.
However, as the CNN report noted, the “US intelligence finding comes after a week’s worth of diplomatic meetings between Russian and Western officials over Russia’s amassing of tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine’s border. But the talks failed to achieve any breakthroughs, as Russia would not commit to de-escalating and American and NATO officials said Moscow’s demands — including that NATO never admit Ukraine into the alliance — were non-starters.”
“A number of Ukraine’s governmental websites were hit by a cyberattack on Friday, a development European officials warned would ratchet up tensions over Ukraine even further,” the report added.
