US Warned of Russian 'False Flag' Ukraine operation

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Mick West

Mick West

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Article:
Jan 14 2022
A Pentagon spokesman said Russian operatives were planning a "false-flag" operation, to allow Moscow to accuse Ukraine of preparing an attack. Russia has dismissed the claims.

Mr Kirby told reporters on Friday about what he said were Russia's plans.

"It has pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct what we call a false-flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or Russian speaking people in Ukraine as an excuse to go in," he said.

The operatives were trained in urban warfare and using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against pro-Russian rebels, US officials said.


There have been lots of rumblings regarding possible Russian action in Ukraine. This seems the most significant so far.

"False-Flags" have been a common topic of discussion on Metabunk, but generally because any significant event, from 9/11 to a school shooting, is suspected by conspiracists of being a false-flag.

There's obviously going to be a significant propaganda effort on all sides, especially if something happens.

Interestingly Russia itself made a similar accusation back in 2018, saying the US was orchestrating a false-flag in Damascus. Nothing ever came of it, but RT devoted a lot of space over several days in pushing the story.
Article:
25 Aug, 2018 06:24

The US and its allies are preparing new airstrikes on Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that militants are poised to stage a chemical weapons attack in order to frame Damascus and provide a pretext for the strikes.
 
On 13 January, speaking at a press briefing, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan: "Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext" ( https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/01...ce-warn-russia-prepares-pretext-for-invasion/ )
That sounds rather vague.


Ukraine is difficult in terms of CT, as the opinion that the February 2018 sniper shootings on the Maidan in Kiev were a false flag operation still exists.
Attribution of the attack on MH17 was difficult as well.

At this point, I wouldn't want to predict who's going to do what.
 
In 1939 Nazi Germany used false-flag attacks to justify the invasion of Poland. Yes, really: they claimed they were responding to Polish aggression, having staged some attacks on German soil by German troops in Polish uniforms. Of course, behind the scenes they had already agreed with Stalin's USSR to divide up Poland between them, while the USSR also occupied the Baltic states and tried invading Finland. (That part didn't go so well.) Putin and the Russians will be well aware of this. The Russian takeover of the Crimea, and the incitement of ethnic Russians in the Donetz region of Ukraine, are moves right out of Hitler's playbook.
 
Mick West said:
"It has pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct what we call a false-flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or Russian speaking people in Ukraine as an excuse to go in," he said.

The operatives were trained in urban warfare and using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against pro-Russian rebels, US officials said.
Click to expand...
What if this is a "flag" operation?

My theory is that Ukraine has asked the US and the UK for help in re-taking the rebel areas.
These countries are preparing for war in Ukraine, they've pulled their personnel out, etc.
They'll start the attack with "operatives trained in urban warfare and using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against pro-Russian rebels", then point to that as indicative of Russia starting the aggression ("false flag"!), and bring in the big guns.

In this scenario, Putin would have learned of this plan early on, and stationed his own troops at the border to prevent a Gulf War I (Desert Storm) scenario where the coalition invaded Iraq after freeing Kuwait.
 
I'm sure most here are aware of the problable 'false flag' 1999 bombings that help Putin solidify power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
Specifically the 'ryazan incident'
Hmmm the wikipedia page has changed quite a bit from last I looked at it (> 2 years ago)

https://www.gq.com/story/moscow-bombings-mikhail-trepashkin-and-putin
But then something very strange happened. It happened in the sleepy provincial city of Ryazan, some 120 miles southeast of Moscow.
Amid the state of hypervigilance that had seized the nation, several residents of 14/16 Novosyolov Street in Ryazan took notice when a white Zhiguli sedan pulled up to park beside their apartment building on the evening of September 22. They became downright panicked when they observed two men removing several large sacks from the car's trunk and carrying them into the basement before speeding away. Residents called the police.
Discovered in the basement were three 110-pound white sacks wired to a detonator and explosive timer. As police quickly evacuated the building, the local FSB explosives expert was called in to defuse the detonator; he determined that the sacks contained RDX, a explosive powerful enough to have brought the entire apartment building down. In the meantime, roadblocks were established on all roads out of Ryazan, and a massive manhunt for the Zhiguli and its occupants got underway.
By the following afternoon, word of the incident in Ryazan had spread across Russia. Prime Minister Putin congratulated the residents on their vigilance, while the interior minister lauded recent improvements by the security forces, "such as the foiling of the attempt to blowup the apartment building in Ryazan."

There the matter may well have ended, except that same night two of the suspects in Ryazan were apprehended. To the local authorities' astonishment, both produced FSB identification cards. A short time later, a call came down from FSB headquarters in Moscow that the two were to be released.

The following morning, FSB director Patrushev appeared on television to report a wholly new version of events in Ryazan. Rather than an aborted terrorist attack, he explained, the incident at 14/16 Novosyolov Street had actually been an FSB "training exercise" to test the public's alertness. Further, he said, the sacks in the basement had contained not explosives, but rather common household sugar.
Click to expand...
 
CaptainCourgette said:
I'm sure most here are aware of the problable 'false flag' 1999 bombings that help Putin solidify power
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I don't really see the similarity. There's no claim that Ukrainians would start attacking Russian infrastructure. The claim is that the false flag operation is to show Ukrainians attacking military targets in the seceded part of Ukraine, which has happened before.

Obviously the US have also conducted and planned false flag operations internationally (op. Ajax, op. Northwoods); in this case, we'd not be looking at that, but rather at false evidence, such as WMD in Iraq or the horseshoe plan in Yugoslavia.

So I don't think there's anything to be gained by citing unrelated precedent.

My thinking is more along the line of "what would actually benefit one of the players in the current environment", and with this approach, I feel there's a substantial probability for the claims of (yet unseen) "evidence" to be false.

I'm open to an explanation of how Putin would have benefitted from a "Ukraine operatives strike at rebel targets in the Donbass region" headline, and how he could have successfully used this to justify an invasion domestically or internationally.

Or we could simply wait and see what actually happens.
 
Outside of just this circumstance, the art of "false flags" or whatever term buzz or legitimate we want to use for it, can become very tricky to counter. When you present it, people look for exactly how it was presented, but the issue is, the exposure causes re-assessment and makes it unlikely to surface as was identified. When it doesn't surface as was identified, whether or not the content itself exists, it has a degrading factor on the releasing party when it comes to trust and also their ability to project information in the future. That is a calculus both sides are aware of and are both going to plan around. The generality of the exposure, alongside messaging issues, create a wedge that Russian government and affiliates can use to exploit for informational and influence activities (as we've already seen), BUT, it that wedge also independently exists regardless of external exploitation. Vice versa, this is something that the 'exposing' side is aware of and is going to heavily impact their decision when projecting that information and knowingly recognizing the degrading factor its going to have (though also unintentionally amplified by other messaging issues).

The benefit in these specific scenarios (ie formulating pretext for military action) is generally to portray ones self as the one unfairly attacked or as the defending party, thus justifying military action as a form of self defense rather than purely offense. This technique in modern times does not really work as "hey lets make everyone believe this", but more adds extra information to the environment that has to be contended with by everyone, including adversarial decision makers. They could end up taking a step that, without the "false flag" would be perceived as entirely legitimate at large; but the confusion and distrust amplified by the informational environment could result in x target audiences having an altered perception. Which is *separate* from anyone actually holding a belief that said content is true, which, could also be a possibility on a personal level, but usually for their specific methodology framework that's not the general intent.

Granted, not false flag territory, but to put the informational environment there into frame, think of how the Soviets exploited anti-war lines during the Cold War. Did it result in pull outs? No, not directly. But it did have a cumulative effect that had an impact on decision makers over matters where public opinion was a critical consideration.
 
Mendel said:
... the opinion that the February 2018 sniper shootings on the Maidan in Kiev were a false flag operation still exists.
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From what I've gathered, the criticism is more about what isn't being said, rather than what is. So it's not considered as much of a "false flag" as an overall unwillingness to even touch the subject. There's been lots of admissions and trials, and lots of evidence of deliberate obfuscation, little of which has made any news outside of the country.

Similarly, the many attacks on and murders of journalists, officials and politicians in Ukraine since 2014 have on occasion made news as they just happened (most have gone entirely unreported outside of Ukraine), but after those initial newspieces, any subsequent findings have been ignored by reporting at large (though to their credit, organizations such as OCCRP did dig into some of it, and like many other cases, discovered Ukrainian authorities basically stonewalling things, a recurring phenomenon that doesn't seem to bother or even register among western correspondents in the country).

It's basically night and day comparing internal Ukrainian news reporting, studies etc with what is being printed hereabouts. Omissions, omissions.

This is a good start:
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/us-russia-nato-donbass-maidan-minsk-war
 
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Mendel said:
What if this is a "flag" operation?

My theory is that Ukraine has asked the US and the UK for help in re-taking the rebel areas.
These countries are preparing for war in Ukraine, they've pulled their personnel out, etc.
They'll start the attack with "operatives trained in urban warfare and using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against pro-Russian rebels", then point to that as indicative of Russia starting the aggression ("false flag"!), and bring in the big guns.

In this scenario, Putin would have learned of this plan early on, and stationed his own troops at the border to prevent a Gulf War I (Desert Storm) scenario where the coalition invaded Iraq after freeing Kuwait.
Click to expand...

Are you saying you think the most likely explanation for the Russian troop build-up is due to Russia determining that the US, UK and Ukraine were planning their own false flag operation as a pretense for flooding Ukraine with US and UK troops ("the big guns")? And that the Russian troop build-up surrounding Ukraine is to prevent the US and UK from invading Russia itself as they did Iraq (your "Gulf War I scenario")?

I must be misunderstanding you, and I apologize for that ahead of time, because my interpretation sounds wildly conspiratorial and I can't imagine a scenario where the US and UK would seek to "invade" Russia.
 
Woolery said:
Are you saying you think the most likely explanation for the Russian troop build-up is due to Russia determining that the US, UK and Ukraine were planning their own false flag operation as a pretense for flooding Ukraine with US and UK troops ("the big guns")? And that the Russian troop build-up surrounding Ukraine is to prevent the US and UK from invading Russia itself as they did Iraq (your "Gulf War I scenario")?

I must be misunderstanding you, and I apologize for that ahead of time, because my interpretation sounds wildly conspiratorial and I can't imagine a scenario where the US and UK would seek to "invade" Russia.
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I don't think anybody has any intention of invading or attacking Russia. The eastern Ukrainian statelets (more or less Russian proxies, though rather unruly ones) could conceivably be threatened by an emboldened Ukraine though, and Russia started demonstratively massing military assets almost a year ago when the Ukrainians had a build-up of their own near the contact line and started flying newly acquired Turkish UCAVs there.

So, Russia's build-up quite obviously started as a deterrent vis-a-vis Ukraine, but then it went into a sort of "phase 2" last fall, much, much larger, and with that came explicit demands about Kyiv implementing the Minsk II protocols which they have stonewalled ever since they were signed (see Volodymyr Ishchenko's take on why above), and talks on additional international security guarantees and what not, involving the US and NATO.

It's tense and worrying right now, but interestingly one of the most striking things is that the "imminent war" talk seems to be emanating mostly from the US and UK whereas it's rather quiet in Ukrainian and Russian media. President Zelensky himself has on more than one occasion criticized the alarmist talk out of Washington to boot. So I'm not particularly surprised at conspiratorial takes flourishing.
 
Woolery said:
Are you saying you think the most likely explanation for the Russian troop build-up is due to Russia determining that the US, UK and Ukraine were planning their own false flag operation as a pretense for flooding Ukraine with US and UK troops ("the big guns")? And that the Russian troop build-up surrounding Ukraine is to prevent the US and UK from invading Russia itself as they did Iraq (your "Gulf War I scenario")?

I must be misunderstanding you, and I apologize for that ahead of time, because my interpretation sounds wildly conspiratorial and I can't imagine a scenario where the US and UK would seek to "invade" Russia.
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Interestingly enough a lot of Russian govt and military view towards these matters actually does in fact root from the belief that the West is doing it, and as such, they need to formulate alike methods to counter it. Know that's not exactly the point you were making but still worth noting. I don't think the theory you mentioned there is accurate either, *but*, we do know from their own admission that it is something they consider that drives their own thought.
 
gargamel said:
This is a good start:
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/us-russia-nato-donbass-maidan-minsk-war
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External Quote:
. It was only about two or three weeks ago that the Ukrainian government started to make very explicit statements that invasion is not really imminent, that we have been under Russian threat since 2014 and we're used to this, and that according to their intelligence, this threat isn't greater than it was in spring last year (during the earlier stage of the Russian buildup, which was done very publicly with very clear intentions).
Nice article, doesn't really surprise me, though it's a welcome update to my knowledge.
 
Woolery said:
I must be misunderstanding you, and I apologize for that ahead of time, because my interpretation sounds wildly conspiratorial and I can't imagine a scenario where the US and UK would seek to "invade" Russia.
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My theory is conspirational, because there's no evidence for it, and because it assumes that the claimed intelligence about the false flag plans is false, i.e. "the government is lying to us". I'm also pretty confident that the claims about these plans are unverifiable, whether they're true or not; so it'll be decades before we really know.

I did not claim that the US and UK seek to invade Russia, that's a straw man.

In cold war terms, this is about whose "sphere of influence" Ukraine is in, a reverse of the Cuban missile crisis, with Putin threatening Russia's nuclear arsenal; except it's not really cold war any more, and the Europeans should really be able to solve this diplomatically.
 
Mendel said:
My theory is conspirational, because there's no evidence for it, and because it assumes that the claimed intelligence about the false flag plans is false, i.e. "the government is lying to us". I'm also pretty confident that the claims about these plans are unverifiable, whether they're true or not; so it'll be decades before we really know.

I did not claim that the US and UK seek to invade Russia, that's a straw man.

In cold war terms, this is about whose "sphere of influence" Ukraine is in, a reverse of the Cuban missile crisis, with Putin threatening Russia's nuclear arsenal; except it's not really cold war any more, and the Europeans should really be able to solve this diplomatically.
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A lot going on in this thread...

Im not sure how the Europeans should be able to solve the issue of Russia staging 108 Battlegroups along Ukraine's border as if its a simple diplomatic issue. Diplomacy has failed in the recovery of the Donbass and Crimea, and it looks as if there will be no diplomatic impact on those two territories any time soon. What exactly is Europe failing to do on this?

Secondly, there has been zero preparations to move any significant numbers of UK forces into the region, and certainly no heavy or strategic equipment, so the 'big guns' theory seems a bit weak. RT is running all sorts of exaggerated nonsense on their site about Ukraine being 'pumped with weapons' when in fact these are all tactical weapons and not the sort of thing you'd need to mount Barberossa 2.0.

Thirdly, the 'false flag' op should it ever occur, would be for internal Russian consumption as no-one in the west apart from the usual useful idiots would buy any claim that Ukrainian forces suddenly decided to poke the Russian bear just for the badness of it. It might be received with a straight face in Vladivostok, but I doubt anyone else would believe it for a second.

Russia is also running an amazing double standard, in which they complain bitterly about Nato forces operating 'close to the Russian border' of which NATO only borders 6% of the largest country in the world, of which the forces are very small by comparison, yet in the same breath says 'hey, we are free to move our forces anywhere within our country' as if its nothing.

There could also be another possibility to explain Russia's (in reality Putin's) strategy, in which this could be a multi-year game in which he mobilises, then withdraws, then repeats it again, until it becomes predictable and then they do something dramatic, similar to the proceedings prior to the Egyptian attack in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
 
Mendel said:
In this scenario, Putin would have learned of this plan early on, and stationed his own troops at the border to prevent a Gulf War I (Desert Storm) scenario where the coalition invaded Iraq after freeing Kuwait.
Click to expand...

This is absurd. I can't believe it's written seriously on a skeptics forum.

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/us-russia-nato-donbass-maidan-minsk-war
Click to expand...

Jacobin is a far leftist rag with no credentials to discuss foreign policy. Their analysis is strictly "US bad" and they ignore the various imperialist actions from Russia.
 
yoshy said:
This is absurd. I can't believe it's written seriously on a skeptics forum.



Jacobin is a far leftist rag with no credentials to discuss foreign policy. Their analysis is strictly "US bad" and they ignore the various imperialist actions from Russia.
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Has nothing to do with leftism or ignoring Russias wrongdoings. Ishchenko is a Ukrainian scholar in Berlin.
https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/VolodymyrIshchenko

But I agree, as noted earlier a big part of the issue is that a lot of things pertaining to this part of the world are ignored by media at large and subsequently only mentioned in somewhat marginalized outlets.

I noticed this first hand when Swedish historian and expert on eastern European nationalism Dr. P A Rudling just disappeared from "mainstream" discussion a few months into 2014, because certain insights of his didn't square with the, err, agreed upon narrative so to speak.

That, on the other hand is not a conspiracy theory. Moderate, balanced and insightful voices were rapidly shut down everywhere, including in Russia itself, and were then only heard in outlets easily dismissed as being "fringe-y", if at all.

That dynamic frightens me. Wasn't entirely unexpected in Russia (or Ukraine), but really gave me a heads-up when it occured everywhere else as well.
 
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gargamel said:
Has nothing to do with leftism or ignoring Russias wrongdoings. Ishchenko is a Ukrainian scholar in Berlin.
https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/VolodymyrIshchenko

But I agree, as noted earlier a big part of the issue is that a lot of things pertaining to this part of the world are ignored by media at large and subsequently only mentioned in somewhat marginalized outlets.

I noticed this first hand when Swedish historian and expert on eastern European nationalism Dr. P A Rudling just disappeared from "mainstream" discussion a few months into 2014, because certain insights of his didn't square with the, err, agreed upon narrative so to speak.

That, on the other hand is not a conspiracy theory. Moderate, balanced and insightful voices were rapidly shut down everywhere, including in Russia itself, and were then only heard in outlets easily dismissed as being "fringe-y", if at all.

That dynamic frightens me. Wasn't entirely unexpected in Russia (or Ukraine), but really gave me a heads-up when it occured everywhere else as well.
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Fair enough about that particular article.

I won't argue about that article but Mendel's claims and scenario are still just insane.
 
yoshy said:
Fair enough about that particular article.

I won't argue about that article but Mendel's claims and scenario are still just insane.
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Well, yes, but he did say it's "conspirational".

Anyway, interesting developments today. Putin met with German Chancellor Scholz in Moscow and during the meeting it was widely reported that the Russo-Belarusian excercises "Allied Resolve" were concluded and that Russian forces started to withdraw from there (fulfilling a promise made by Putin to President Macron during his visit in Moscow last week), and that Russian forces were now also being withdrawn from the Crimean peninsula.(1)

Meanwhile, talk in Kyiv to finally implement the old Minsk II agreement has gained ground, which in my opinion was the entire point of the increased Russian build-up. Russia gains heaps of leverage over Ukrainian foreign policy (NATO aspirations being the sore point for Moscow) if Ukraine finally accepts the terms they actually did sign way back then, and that's good enough for them.

The other NATO talk (demands towards NATO itself to stop what the Russians term "NATO expansion") was rebuffed on principle, and I don't think the Russians actually imagined it to go anywhere in the first place. Some kind of "haggling" strategy, is my personal take. Deliberately unreasonable demands that can then be backtracked upon, and seem like a "concession", hopefully ending up at a new "middle ground" that remains advantageous.

Russian defense minister Shoygu decided to leave Russia, flying to Syria to oversee a naval-air exercise in the eastern Mediterranean, in the middle of this all. An exercise involving key Russian strategic assets such as cruise missile-equipped frigates and subs, and Tu-22M3 nuclear missile trucks and MiG-31Ks (mach 3 interceptor re-designed to carry hypersonic land-attack missiles). (2)

...But meanwhile, British tabloids are citing "U.S. intelligence" saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will begin 5-6 hours from now. And the Russian foreign ministry with their notorious spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded to this by basically saying "you should apologize for how foolish and irresponsible you are".

One of these two will look terrible tomorrow.

(1) That is "excess" forces that have been filling up the place in two distinct drives, in early 2021 and then in late 2021-early 2022. The reason for the first drive (which also included Russian forces in the regions adjacent to mainland Ukraine) was pretty obvious and direct, and was deliberately overt at the time (see above), the 2nd one half a year later was far larger and more worrying. But they are reportedly withdrawing now.

The Russians will obviously keep forces in Crimea regardless, they consider it their territory and even if that is shunned upon by the vast majority of the international community, Moscow's (or St. Petersburg, for most of the time, technically) had large military contingents there uninterrupted (save for the Nazi occupation of Crimea 1942-44) since 1783.

(2) Just find it somewhat curious that they'd engage such important strategic assets elsewhere, and send top brass there. Russia doesn't really have a whole lot of these things, it's not like the U.S. military by any stretch of the imagination. If a massive war was actually on their agenda I'd imagine that they would prioritize the deployment of their limited capabilities differently. But that's just me, could be wrong, could be a "clever" bluff.
 
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yoshy said:
This is absurd. I can't believe it's written seriously on a skeptics forum.

Jacobin is a far leftist rag with no credentials to discuss foreign policy. Their analysis is strictly "US bad" and they ignore the various imperialist actions from Russia.
Click to expand...

Then perhaps you'd like to address the points raised and provide substantiated counterarguments rather than making a post containing nothing but logical fallacies?
 
any credible reports of significant withdrawals? so far from here it looks like words and not much action (here being mid-west USoA).
 
Let's lay the CT out in a little more detail.

1) Assumption: Ukraine would like to end the Donbass conflict with force.
1a) This is plausible because the Minsk process has stalled.
1b) They don't do it because fighting an ethnic minority with military looks bad.
1c) They don't do it because Russia would come in and help the rebels.

2) The "false flag, Russia attacks" narrative helps here. If a coordinated Ukrainian commando campaign against the rebel forces is seen as Russian aggression, then...
2a) Ukraine is not blamed for escalating the conflict;
2b) Ukraine can retaliate pre-emptively, and attack the rebels;
2c) Ukraine can ask for international military support;
2d) the US/UK could establish a no-fly zone in East Ukraine (precedent Syria)

3) The "false flag" intelligence is currently unverifiable as no details are given. If it never happens, it will remain unverifiable.
3a) If true, Russia could benefit by moving its troops into Donbass, which would help Donbass gain independence from Ukraine. (AFAIK Russia used false flag operations when it occupied the Krim.)
3b) If false, Ukraine could benefit by re-taking Donbass, and abandoning Minsk. (precedent: WMD in Iraq)

What I'm hypothesizing is that it's possible this intelligence is false, because it would align with existing interests, and because as released it is unverifiable.
 
Again, this could all be part of Putin's chess game. They could withdraw part of the force and then initiate the cassus belli, whatever that might be, and claim morale superiority. Interestingly, Putin claimed in his press conference yesterday that there had been a 'genocide' of ethnic Russians in the Donbass since 2014. On BBC Newsnight last night, the Russian Ambassador to the UK didn't seem to know about this genocide when asked for evidence of it.

Regarding the 'withdrawal', the Russians are quite good at moving vast numbers of men and kit over large distances quickly, so this shouldn't be too hard to verify. Video of a few tanks being loaded onto rail beds isn't really proof of withdrawal. It will be when the tents and logistic dumps are removed that some degree of seriousness could be attributed to it.
 
BombDr said:
Yesterday there were several cyber attacks against the Ukraine Ministry of Defence and a couple of prominent banks.
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Distributed denial of service attacks on their websites, to be exact. Ukrainian authorities say botnets from all the way between China to the Czech Republic were used.

Could have been orchestrated by Russia, could have been orchestrated by anyone, as this is the simplest method of messing with an online service. As Mendel mentioned, anything "cyber" is difficult if not impossible to accurately attribute and there are lots of smoke and mirrors in that department (on the topic of "false flags"), but that's actual "hacking"... Denial of service attacks on the other hand are so simple that it could be anyone. Just a selection from my local area:

12-year old Swedish kid hired a botnet for $40 to bring down an entire Swedish regional government's internet services for days:
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/tolvaring-kopte-it-attackerna-pa-natet
He was only caught because he was bragging about it to his friends.

17-year old Norwegian kid brought down several banks, ISPs, insurance companies etc:
https://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.569079/17-arig-norrman-gripen-efter-gigantisk-attack
He claimed he was acting as "Anonymous" and wanted to highlight vulnerabilities...

16-year old Swedish kid brought down several banks, and demanded money to cease the attacks:
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/6311756

The botnets are for hire for as little as $10 an hour:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ddos-attacks-are-10-per-hour-on-the-dark-web/

So, sure, it could have been the Russian state that orchestrated this, to deny access to a bunch of Ukrainian online services, but it could also be a hundred other "actors" with as many different motivations, which unfortunately includes people acting entirely on their own in what they believe is "patriotism" all the way to the "false flag" thing, in a manner of speaking. NB, actual attribution remains a murky affair, but everyone knows who the fingers will be pointed at in a situation like this, so to speak, so it's a real cheap way to stir things up for many.

Another factor that "helps" is the overall media tech illiteracy (these are regularly called "hacker attacks", for instance...). Most of these botnets are distributed in developing countries, where big IT systems and even people's personal computers, phones and other connected gadgets are less protected. often running obsolete OSes, and thus are susceptible to malware infection (which is what these botnets are, at the core, malware). So, it is rather common that the mass traffic they generate comes from China, Russia, India, Central Asian countries etc. And that provides cheap headlines.
 
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Mendel said:
They'll start the attack with "operatives trained in urban warfare and using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against pro-Russian rebels", then point to that as indicative of Russia starting the aggression ("false flag"!), and bring in the big guns.

In this scenario, Putin would have learned of this plan early on, and stationed his own troops at the border to prevent a Gulf War I (Desert Storm) scenario where the coalition invaded Iraq after freeing Kuwait.
Click to expand...

Ok let's start at the top here. Bring in what big guns? Ukraine doesn't have any "big guns" to surprise anybody with. The next sentence is seriously implying that Ukraine and Western forces would...invade Russia?!?!? Why would would Russia assemble an offensive invasion force to protect against an invasion? It's hard to respond to these claims since they are nonsensical. The US/coalition forces numbered in the several hundred thousands, with thousands of tanks and armored vehicles. Are they hiding these in Ukraine somewhere?

I did not claim that the US and UK seek to invade Russia, that's a straw man.
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I have no idea how else to interpret your comment. How else could you relate this to Desert Storm?

because it assumes that the claimed intelligence about the false flag plans is false, i.e. "the government is lying to us". I'm also pretty confident that the claims about these plans are unverifiable, whether they're true or not; so it'll be decades before we really know.
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This wouldn't even be the first time Putin has used false flag tactics to increase his power (the Russian apartment bombings).

Russia already claimed a terror attack: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-696579

And genocide lol https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-claims-genocide-happening-in-donbas-region-of-ukraine-2022-2

The whole Ukraine situation is a replay of Russia's tactics with Georgia. Russia wants its power back in former Soviet Union member => fund, arm, and direct separatist attacks in sovereign nation => wait for nation to defend itself => use as pretext for invasion => invade.

1) Assumption: Ukraine would like to end the Donbass conflict with force.
1a) This is plausible because the Minsk process has stalled.
1b) They don't do it because fighting an ethnic minority with military looks bad.
1c) They don't do it because Russia would come in and help the rebels.

2) The "false flag, Russia attacks" narrative helps here. If a coordinated Ukrainian commando campaign against the rebel forces is seen as Russian aggression, then...
2a) Ukraine is not blamed for escalating the conflict;
2b) Ukraine can retaliate pre-emptively, and attack the rebels;
2c) Ukraine can ask for international military support;
2d) the US/UK could establish a no-fly zone in East Ukraine (precedent Syria)

3) The "false flag" intelligence is currently unverifiable as no details are given. If it never happens, it will remain unverifiable.
3a) If true, Russia could benefit by moving its troops into Donbass, which would help Donbass gain independence from Ukraine. (AFAIK Russia used false flag operations when it occupied the Krim.)
3b) If false, Ukraine could benefit by re-taking Donbass, and abandoning Minsk. (precedent: WMD in Iraq)
Click to expand...

This doesn't explain why Russia would amass over 100k troops on Ukraine's border. Your conspiracy theory also doesn't fit with the broader timeline in general. Not too long ago, under Obama, the US made a serious effort to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was even a NATO partner, so that NATO and Russia could coordinate security projects together. But Putin's thirst for power resulted in him looking to reestablish Russian power over former Soviet states, as Russia drifts farther into right wing nationalism.

No sign of pullback: https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...adimir-putin-534fb1c355ff5f135ba0261cb1448c3c

Increasing troop numbers: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/nato-says-russia-is-increasing-troop-count-at-ukrainian-border.html

Overall, Mendel's comments are concerning to me because they utilize the exact playbook that Russian troll farms have been shown to use: project and deflect. Any Russian aggression is actually the US's fault, or use what-aboutisms to deflect onto the US.
 
Mendel said:
I did not claim that the US and UK seek to invade Russia, that's a straw man.
Click to expand...
Who's arguing you claimed that? I said I couldn't imagine a scenario where the US and UK would invade Russia, as they invaded Iraq. You're arguing that Putin thinks this scenario is imminent and has amassed an offensive military force on the Ukrainian border to thwart an imagined invasion force that as of today does not exist. Your theory implies Putin strongly believes the US and UK will invade Russia (though he's never mentioned such a theory to date). I think your theory is far less probable than the theory that Putin amassed troops on the Ukrainian border to indicate to the world he is ready to invade Ukraine. Whether he intends to do so, or is simply looking for diplomatic leverage, remains to be seen.

Your theory, which involves Putin being convinced the US is executing a plan to occupy Russia with ground troops, seems unlikely to the point of absurdity to me. What about the threat of nuclear annihilation? Why would the US seek to subdue and occupy the largest country in the world? Occam's razor is helpful here.
 
Russia isn't ten-feet tall, and neither is Putin. But he's at least street-smart---if not a strategist. He's taken advantage of a weak POTUS to make himself look tough.

China and Russia are not all that comfortable with each other.

Putin knows damn well that Russia has very little the USA wants, and nothing that it needs enough to fight for. China meanwhile must look at all the resources in nearly empty Western Siberia and lick their lips.

If Putin goes hot in the west, China might back him up. Or, while he's busy, Xi might check out the indigenous population of Siberia and notice they look a helluva lot more like him than Putin. He might think that those Orientals need Chinese protection---y'know, like Putin protected Russians in the Crimea and Mao protected Tibet from the Tibetans.

Today, all of a sudden Biden looks like he wants to start shooting (mid-terms?) while Putin appears to be having second thoughts about a kinetic war. China waits, counting its money.
 
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