The Pentagon said today that Russia may “fabricate a pretext for an invasion” against Ukraine.
“As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
However, US officials said the latest development was reported by intelligence sources while adding that there were no videos available at the moment.
The spokesman said, “I’m not going to spell out what is in our possession” even as Russia condemned American troop deployments in the region.
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The United States has been warning for months that Russia is planning an invasion against Ukraine while massing thousands of troops at the border. President Putin has repeatedly denied any invasion plans while insisting that Russian troops have the right the move around anywhere inside their own territory.
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“We’ve seen these kinds of activity by the Russians in the past and we believe it’s important when we see it like this that we can call it out,” Kirby said, adding,”I would just say that our experience is that very little of this nature is not approved at the highest levels of the Russian government.”
Pentagon said Russia is planning to “initiate and potentially justify military aggression against Ukraine” by developing a “fake pretext”. Russia however dismissed reports of trying to manufacture a conflict.
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“It’s obvious that these are not steps aimed at de-escalating tensions, but on the contrary, they are actions that lead to increasing tensions,” Kremlin spokesman said referring to the Biden administration’s decision to send 3,000 troops to Poland and Romania.
The Kremlin spokesman added that Russian officials have been trying to “call on American counterparts to stop aggravating tensions”, but “unfortunately, the Americans continue to do so”.
Amid escalating tensions, NATO chief Stoltenberg said more Russian troops had arrived in Belarus with both countries conducting joint drills, asserting that it was the “biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War”.
(With inputs from Agencies)
