The Kremlin is preparing to massacre civilians then use fake news messaging in state-run and co-opted international media to pin blame for the mass casualty event on Ukraine, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (SZRU) said on Friday in a rare public statement.
The Russian operation is likely to take the form of an “armed provocation” against an Orthodox Christian church (or another location where civilians gather peacefully) and may take place overnight on Jan. 6-7, according to the statement – the date of Christmas in the Julian calendar and a major religious holiday for the Christian faithful in Russia.
The strike would most likely take place within the Russian Federation or in a Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia with a Christian Orthodox community. A “site of high symbolic significance” might be targeted instead of a church, the statement said.
The Kremlin’s objective in perpetrating such an attack would be to undermine White House support for Ukraine in ongoing US-led peace talks – and, with luck, torpedo them.
Aside from citing “credible sources,” the SZRU statement offered no proof to confirm these allegations – noting, however, that terrorism and false flag operations are common practice for Russian intelligence agencies, and calling on independent media to be critical of Kremlin-produced content.
“Exploiting fear and committing terrorist acts with human casualties under a ‘foreign flag’ is entirely consistent with the modus operandi of russian special services,” the SZRU said.
A low-profile clandestine agency operating outside Ukraine, the SZRU rarely issues public statements, including about possible Russian false-flag operations planned or in progress.
On Dec. 31, citing an anonymous official, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded that a Ukrainian attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private country residence alleged by the Kremlin two days earlier never took place.
Led by Russia’s Defense Ministry, state media outlets claimed at the time that a swarm of more than 90 Ukrainian kamikaze drones had swarmed Putin’s home in a forest near the village of Valdai, but were all shot down by air defenses. Subsequent Russian media reports included interviews with “eyewitnesses”, video and photographs of “shot down Ukrainian drones” and “expert analysis” contending that the attack against the Russian leader and his family actually took place.
Independent media, Kyiv Post among them, rubbished the Kremlin narrative within days, as did NATO nation intelligence agencies.
The CIA statement contradicted previous remarks by US President Donald Trump who, when asked by Washington reporters about the alleged Ukrainian strike, said that he was “very angry” with Ukraine over the incident.
“It’s not good,” Trump said. “It’s one thing to be offensive because they’re offensive. It’s another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that.”
Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion, Russian media outlets flooded newsfeeds with content about purported “Ukrainian attacks against ethnic Russian civilians” in Ukraine and “the Nazi takeover of Ukraine’s government,” arguing that this justified Russia’s invasion. In the early days of the war, Kremlin news outlets alleged that Ukrainian scientists were constructing weapons of mass destruction in secret biolabs.
Those narratives were false and widely proved to be false by independent media on the ground at the time, including Kyiv Post.
In September 1999, in another possible Russian secret false flag operation used to justify war and invasion, a series of apartment bombings in the cities Buynaksk, Volgodonsk and Moscow killed over 300 civilians and injured more than 1,700.
The Russian government blamed Chechen separatists and used the attacks to justify launching the Second Chechen War, a victorious campaign that helped propel then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to national popularity and election as President.
Independent Russian media later reported that agents from Russia’s FSB national intelligence service most likely laid the explosives, citing government-standard explosives and agents found in the vicinity of the attack sites. The Kremlin has always denied this.