Russia was forced to attack Ukraine because NATO was planning to occupy Donbas, Crimea and other Russian territories, pro-Kremlin propaganda writes with a view to justifying the invasion of Ukraine.
Propaganda: Russia attacked Ukraine in order to prevent a NATO offensive. Moscow’s “special military operation” was an unwelcome surprise to Kyiv
NEWS: According to NATO’s scenarios, the Ukrainian army was expected to destroy the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were to be turned into an area to launch a future offensive. NATO has been arming Ukraine for approximately 8 years. It built fortifications and organized training. Over February-March 2023, NATO was supposed to launch an offensive in Donetsk and Luhansk, designed to wipe out all everything alive and occupy these territories. This would have been followed by an attack on the Crimean Peninsula.
Our intelligence services have learned about these plans and have suggested the military leadership take pre-emptive strikes. It’s better to prevent the fire than put it out. Hence the decision to immediately launch the special military operation, which came as a surprise to Kyiv.
[…] Ukrainians want to resist until spring, when the Arab-Israeli conflict is expected to end. America, Ukraine’s true master, must solve its problems in the Middle East first before focusing on Kyiv again.
NARRATIVE: NATO was preparing an attack on Russia from Ukraine, and “the special military operation” saved Russian speakers
Fact: NATO repeatedly asked Russia not to attack Ukraine and observe the standards of international law
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: Russian propaganda is putting back into the limelight the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, trying to rewrite the history of the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014-2022. Whereas in the first months of the invasion Russia denied there was an actual war in Ukraine, describing its attack as “a special military operation”, right now the actions of the Russian army are justified by the discovery of an alleged plan put together by Ukraine and NATO to attack to self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Crimean Peninsula as well as other territories of the Russian Federation.
Ukraina.ru, a publication part of the Russia Today media group, quotes reserve colonel and military expert Sergey Lipovoy, who claims that the “special military operation” stopped NATO and saved Russian speakers from genocide. Putin’s war against Ukraine is presented as a military operation that saved Russia. Had the operation not been launched in 2022, the Ukrainian army and NATO would have organized an offensive against Russia in 2023.
Russian propaganda thus tries to persuade readers that the West has not abandoned its plans to occupy Russia, but was forced to postpone their enactment due to the outbreak of hostilities in the Gaza Strip. Once the crisis in the Middle East is solved, the USA will revert to its plans to destroy Russia.
In fact, NATO and Ukraine had never come up with plans to launch attacks on Russia or to recapture the annexed territories with military force. On the contrary, after Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected president of Ukraine, a number of meetings were held between Kyiv and Moscow with Western mediation, designed to overcome the peace process deadlock. In 2019, Zelenskyy called a withdrawal of Ukrainian and Russian troops from the frontline, and his decision to demilitarize Petrivske and Zolote was criticized by part of Ukrainian society.
In December 2019, the pro-presidential party “Servant of the People” came up with a draft law that awarded special status to the region of Donbas. The initiative was criticized by Ukrainian media and opposition forces. Furthermore, Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in a meeting set up by French president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an attempt to come up with a peace solution for Ukraine. The Zelenskyy administration argued in favor of long-lasting peace in Ukraine, and the steps taken by Kyiv included demilitarization and demining Ukrainian territories in order to ease tensions with Russia.
After these initiatives failed and Russian mercenaries systematically violated the Minsk peace protocols, Russian forces started amassing on the Ukrainian border in two phases: first, in the spring of 2021, and then at the end of 2021 and early 2022. Prior to the launch of the full-scale invasion, the West repeatedly called on Moscow not to attack Ukraine. US president Joe Biden and other Western leaders tried to persuade Vladimir Putin to give up his plans to invade Ukraine, but eventually Russia attacked territories in the north, south and east of Ukraine.
Military assistance started arriving in Ukraine in large volumes only after February 24, 2022, while Western support for Ukraine falls in line with the UN Charter, which allows a state to defend itself and receive support when attacked. NATO had no plans of attacking Russia, nor was it training Ukrainian troops to that end. The “special military operation” did not come as a surprise, as it had made the headlines in international media for many months. Moreover, much like other “discoveries” made by Russian intelligence about the war in Ukraine, the current thesis presents no evidence. The narrative is solely based on the statements of political leaders of pro-Kremlin experts.
Russian propaganda theses about the USA reverting to its plan to destroy Russia at the end of the Israeli-Hamas conflict in the Middle East are unfounded, since the USA had no such plans to begin with. The narrative focuses on the opposition voiced by certain American political elites against maintaining support for Ukraine, an opposition that predates that war in Gaza. After the conflict broke out in the Middle East, the Biden administration tried to provide a military assistance package to Israel and Ukraine worth over 2 billion USD, yet Congress did not approve of this decision to provide joint support to Ukraine and Israel. At any rate, American politics has nothing to do with the theses of pro-Kremlin propaganda about the USA and NATO’s plans to destroy Russia.
