we learned recently, Russia was planning a false flag
operation as a way to justify to the world invading
Ukraine. This wasn't some weird unverified leak that
showed up online. Know this came from government
agencies that level of transpar in the pace of the
intel is really unusual. Using national Securit
correspondent Sasha Ingber aske around what is the
strategy here Mhm. It's a standoff between a former KGB
officer Russian President Vladi Putin and a former
comedian and actor, Ukrainian President Vladimir
Zelensky. Russia is laying the groundwork to have the
option of fabricating a pretext for an invasion. This
kind of intelligence is being shared by the biden
administration in near real time. A spokesperson for
the National Security Council tells Newsy The
disclosures are meant to quote, deny Russia the
opportunity to use these lies to justify an invasion of
Ukraine. Would you say these d classifications are
helping to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine It'
too early to say whether it's going to prevent an
incursion forces continue to build up and nobody knows
yet whether Putin is going to decide to invade. But
it's clear that there's an information warfare game
going on, Paul Colby led the CIA's Russia Operations
he says exposing Moscow's plans now helps discredit its
excuses for actions taken later. And he's confident the
U.S. Intelligence community is carefully assessing what
it shares to protect sources and methods since Russi
security services could use it to modify their own
operations. They will be lookin to try to find out the
source of that leak. They will try to close it. And
that's one of the risks of using intelligence
information uh in an information war. The US warning
range from false flags to fake videos. We have
information that they pre positioned a group of
operatives to conduct what we call a false flag
operation. We know that this is an option under
consideration. That would involve, you know, actors
playing Warner's for people who are killed in an event
that they would have created themselves. That would
involve the deployment of corpses to represent bodies
purportedly killed in people purportedly killed in an
incident like this. Intelligence historian calder
Walton says it all sounds familiar when it comes to
false flags. Russia is unambiguously the past. Master
of using them deploying them. The Kremlin has used them
in the past during the Cold War in order to use them as
a pretext to military intervention in countries in it
so called near abroad. And it's done so in order to
shore up its security in those countries and in some
cases install client leaders. Recent british
intelligence warned the Kremlin is trying to install a
pro Russian leader in Kiev. Still, the disclosures ha
brought skepticism of officials assertions. Where is
the declassified information ot than you coming out
here and obtaining records for a deep understanding of
the moment can take decades. There's also another
wrinkle on this. The Russian government of course,
would know that the US government is collecting tha
intelligence. So how much of it is being deliberately
broadcast by Russian troops in Russia. Russian
government knowing that it will be intercepted and here
we find ourselves in the wilderness of mirrors of
intelligence and counterintelli smoke and mirrors
officials in Russia continue to deny there are any
plans to invade Ukraine. And also today Chance, the
Senate intelligence committee s a letter to biden
urging him to share as much intelligence as possibl
with Ukraine. There was a fascinating way he put that
wilderness of mirrors. You can kind of, you know, just
get paralyzed in that not knowing what is what. But I
wonder Sasha as you're going through your sources here
Is Is this a correction to 2016 maybe when the Intel
about Russian interference in the election, it was held
so close for so long that it barely made a splash at
the time when they finally put it out. What's an
interesting question because certainly the Obama
administration did not sound those alarm bells loudly.
And of course, years later, Biden said that Mitch
McConnell didn't sign bipartisan statement trying to
show awareness of Russian interference in 2016. So
there are other factors that play the political
fracture certainly benefited Ru But maybe it would
be more fair to make a correction comparison to 2014
with the Obama administration because certainl
did not deter Russia from invading from annexing Cri
We are still seeing fighting in eastern Ukraine. But I
should also say that the United States has also gone a
little bit too far. Back in 1983 chance, the United
States insisted that the Soviets purposefully shot down
a passenger plane and then, years later concluded tha
it was likely a mistake. So this is a sensitive area,
very delicate, whichever way you go.