WASHINGTON — The United States has obtained intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video alleged to build on recent disinformation campaigns, according to senior government officials and others informed about the material.
The plan — which the United States hopes to spoil by making it public — involves staging and filming a trumped-up attack by the Ukrainian military on Russian soil or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.
Russia, the officials said, planned to use the video to accuse Ukraine of genocide against Russian-speaking people. It would then use the outrage over the video to justify an attack or have separatist leaders in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine invite Russian intervention.
Officials would not release direct evidence of the Russian plan or how they learned about it, saying it would jeopardize their sources and methods. But both a recent Russian disinformation campaign targeting false accusations of genocide and the recent political actions taken in the Russian parliament to recognize breakaway governments in Ukraine gave credence to the intelligence agency.
If carried out, the Russian operation would be an extension of a propaganda theme that US intelligence and outside experts have said Moscow has been exerting pressure on social media, conspiracy sites and state-controlled media since November.
The video was intended to be comprehensive, officials said, with plans for graphics of the staged, corpse-strewn aftermath of an explosion and footage of destroyed sites. They said the video would also feature fake Ukrainian military equipment, Turkish drones and actors playing Russian-speaking mourners.
US officials declined to say exactly who in Russia was planning the operation, but a senior government official said Russian intelligence was “closely involved” in the effort.
Understand Russia’s relationship with the West
Tensions between regions are mounting and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.
A British government official said they had done their own analysis of the intelligence and were very confident that Russia was planning to come up with a pretext to blame Ukraine for an attack. The details of the intelligence, the official said, are “credible and deeply concerning”.
While it’s not clear that senior Russian officials approved the operation, it was well underway and the United States was confident it was being seriously considered, officials said. Russian officials had found corpses to use in the video, talked about actors to play mourners, and devised a plan to make military equipment in the video look like Ukrainian or NATO-supplied.
While the plan sounded far-fetched, U.S. officials said they believed it could have worked to spark a Russian military operation — a result they said they hoped would be made less likely by making the effort public. to make.
Intelligence highlights have been released, hoping to both derail the plot and convince allies of the seriousness of Russia’s planning. The officials interviewed for this article requested anonymity to discuss declassified but sensitive information before it was made public.
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and other top government officials briefed members of Congress on the material on Thursday. Details of the information have also been shared with allies as the United States and Britain practice some sort of intelligence diplomacy.
In recent weeks, both Washington and London have outlined elements of Moscow’s war planning, focusing on planned troop building, uncovering a false flag sabotage plot and unveiling Russian plans to install a friendly government in Kiev.
The strategy aims to convince the allies that Russia is not showing off and has real war plans it could carry out. The releases also aim to force Russia to drop and reformulate plans, further delaying any invasion plan.
The longer the international community can delay a decision by President Vladimir V. Putin on whether to approve a military operation against Ukraine, the more likely he will reconsider his plans, diplomats said.
Some officials in the United States and Britain believe Mr Putin underestimated how many casualties his army would suffer in a direct invasion of Ukraine.
The push from intelligence diplomacy has been modeled in part on Britain’s efforts to respond vigorously to the Russian nerve agent attack on England in 2018. The British government publicly released information about Russian involvement and shared other intelligence privately while urging allies to Russia. diplomats in response.
Understand the escalating tensions over Ukraine
The move to publicize the plan comes as the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, begins to consider legislation to recognize eastern Ukraine as an independent territory, just as Moscow has recognized the Russian-occupied territories of Georgia.
If the Russian parliament recognized Ukraine’s Donbas region as an independent state, a Moscow-appointed leader of that breakaway state could ask Mr Putin for help. Mr Putin has argued many times that in such a case, intervention would be consistent with international law and the precedents set by the United States.
US officials believe the plans for the video will also include Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones used by the Ukrainian military.
Last year, after a Ukrainian soldier was killed in an artillery strike, the Ukrainian military used one of the drones to counterattack a howitzer used by Russian-led separatist forces. Russia put down fighter jets and the situation escalated.
Russian disinformation in recent weeks has falsely accused NATO of planning an invasion or intervention in Ukraine. By highlighting the presence of weapons made by Turkey, a NATO ally, the Russians could accuse the alliance of heightening tensions in the conflict and be guilty of the deaths of Russian speakers.
The draft law pending in Russia would recognize what Moscow calls the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Russia considered recognizing governments in the separatist-controlled region in 2014, but eventually withdrew.
The proposal has been revived in recent days by members of the Communist Party, the second largest faction in the Russian State Duma. The Russian parliamentarians pushing the law have argued that Ukraine is planning an offensive to restore control of the area. If that happens, Russian lawmakers say Russian-speaking residents will be denied basic rights.
Ukrainian repression of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine is a common theme of Russian state media and websites controlled by Russian intelligence services. But the reality is that language is not the hard dividing line in Ukraine that Moscow suggests.
