The US has warned repeatedly over the past weeks that the Kremlin will attempt to stage an attack inside Ukraine to create a pretext for an invasion of the country.

Russian operatives would likely attack Russian land or ethnic Russians in Ukraine, film and publicise the aftermath, as if it had been a Ukrainian attack on Russians, thus giving the Kremlin a justification for an invasion, the Pentagon said.

“As part of this fake attack,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on February 4, “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.”

This sort of tactic, known as a “false-flag” attack, is an event or action committed by one group to create a false-perception about another side, usually in a conflict.

The full story here.