Why would Russia send masked soldiers to lead protests in another country? Or will it direct its troops to strike Russia’s allies?
Russia has a long history of conducting such “false flag” operations to portray itself or its allies as victims, dodge accountability, spread confusion, and establish a justification for war.
Russia sent unmarked soldiers to incite unrest in Georgia in 2008, and when the Georgian government retorted, Russia invaded them. In 2014, Russian special forces infiltrated Ukraine, posing as indigenous self-defence groups and seized government facilities, precipitating Russia’s takeover of Crimea.
Officials in the United States warn that the Kremlin may revert to old tactics.
“We have intelligence that Russia has already pre-positioned a group of agents in Eastern Ukraine to launch a false flag operation,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on January 14. “The operatives have been trained in urban warfare and the use of explosives in order to carry out sabotage against Russia’s proxy forces.”
Concerns that Russia may launch a false flag operation in Ukraine emerge as Russian President Vladimir Putin amasses over 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border and promotes false narratives that Ukraine is attempting to spark conflict.
Together with its friends and partners, the US has urged a peaceful conclusion. From January 18–21, Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Kyiv, Berlin, and Geneva to respond to Russia’s threat to Ukraine.
Russia’s false flag operations reach back to the 1970s and take a variety of shapes. In 1939, the Soviet Union shelled its troops near Finland’s Soviet town of Manila. It subsequently accused Finland of the attack and invaded its neighbour, despite a non-aggression convention between the two countries.
Russian state hackers have posed as operatives of Iran’s dictatorship or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to avoid accountability. Russia’s military carried out a ransomware attack on Ukrainian firms in 2017. While the attack was staged to appear to be the work of profiteers rather than state actors, according to Wired magazine, a collaborative investigation by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States determined that the Kremlin was involved.
In a June 2021 assessment on Russia’s cyberspace policy, NATO stated that Russia’s false flag operations hamper detecting and prosecuting hackers.
On January 14, Ukrainian officials claimed that hackers had targeted government websites, including the website for the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that Russia was most likely responsible.
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