“It’s a page from the Russian playbook,” said one of the officials. “We are very aware that Russia will try to invent a pretext to carry...
“It’s a page from the Russian playbook,” said one of the officials. “We are very aware that Russia will try to invent a pretext to carry out a coup attempt.”
The Kremlin pushed back the intelligence assessment. “So far, all these statements are unfounded and have not been confirmed by anything,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov told TASS, a state-run news agency.
The discovery of the intelligence was reported earlier by CNN.
A senior Biden administration official said he fears saboteurs or provocateurs could stage an incident in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, sparking a possible pretext for a coup. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said months ago he believed a coup attempt was underway, but it never materialized.
Ukraine’s military intelligence service announced earlier on Friday that it had intercepted information about a plot by Russian spies to launch a sabotage operation from disputed territory in Moldova, southern Ukraine, where Russia maintains a large contingent of troops. The plan, the statement said, was to attack Russian troops stationed at an arms depot near the border with Ukraine and blame it on Ukrainian forces.
Understanding the escalation of tensions over Ukraine
A senior Ukrainian military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said that while full details of the plot were not known, any provocation in that region could be used to justify an attack on the southern flank of Ukraine, possibly Russia. naval resources in the Black Sea.
The US accusation also encompassed disinformation operations, accusing “Russia influencers are already beginning to fabricate Ukrainian provocations in state and social media to justify Russian intervention and sow division in Ukraine. These include, the official said, “a focus on stories about deteriorating human rights in Ukraine and increased activism by Ukrainian leaders.”
In his briefing to the Pentagon, Mr Kirby said that when “we talk about Russian operatives, it could represent a mix of individuals within the Russian government, whether it’s from their intelligence communities, their security services or even of their soldiers”.
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