US officials accuse Russia of trying to create pretext for invasion

Officials from the United States, which has a long record of carrying out "false flag" operations to justify its wars, have accused Russia of trying to create a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine.

The Washington Post, which is considered close to sources at the CIA, reported on Saturday that, according to people "familiar with the matter," Russia was planning a “false flag” operation as a pretext to an invasion of Ukraine.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed government officials, claimed that the US had obtained new intelligence that suggests Russia is planning to stage an attack that it would falsely blame on Ukraine to justify the invasion.

“Moscow is actively trying to create a casus belli,” or a justification for war, one official said.

Russia has dismissed accusations of such "false flag" operations as anti-Russian propaganda.

US/West need war ‘at any cost’

Meanwhile, Russia has said that both the US government and Western media outlets are stoking military tensions and rebuked claims that it plans to attack Ukraine early next week.

“Hysteria at the White House is revealing more than ever. The Anglo-Saxons need war. At any cost. Provocations, disinformation and threats are [their] favorite method of solving their own problems,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Friday evening.

“The whole world is watching how militarism and imperial ambitions are exposing themselves,” Zakharova said, adding that “the propaganda brigade led by Bloomberg” is complicit in the ongoing escalation.

The statement came after New York-based Bloomberg news agency quoted US sources as saying that Moscow could invade Ukraine as soon as Tuesday.

New York-based analyst and political commentator Don DeBar pointed out that it is the United States, not Russia, that has a long record of running so-called "false flag" operations to enable invasion and war.

"There is no ambiguity there," DeBar commented to Press TV. "This is what they (Americans) do when they need an excuse to go to war. Whether the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the incubator babies and then the invisible WMDs in Iraq, the phony claims of Libyan airplanes strafing protestors, all the way back to the sinking of the Maine... the US government lies, kills and misdirects in order to provide what is, in essence, political public relations cover for war."

Putin says US trying to draw Russia into war over Ukraine

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This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US and its allies of deliberately designing a scenario to lure Moscow into a war over Ukraine.

The Russian president said at a recent news conference in Moscow that the United States was trying to pull Russia into an armed conflict over the thorny issue of Ukraine.

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