Blinken details Russian military plans at UN Security Council meeting

Source: The Hill | February 17, 2022 | Laura Kelly

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday laid out in stark detail for the United Nations Security Council actions the U.S. believes Russia could take to manufacture a crisis and justify an invasion on Ukraine.

Blinken delivered the last-minute speech as the U.S. warns that Moscow is on the precipice of launching a war.

“Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” Blinken said, adding the pretext could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine or “outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government.”

The secretary said this could take the form of a “fabricated so-called terrorist bombing inside Russia, invented discovery of a mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians, or a fake, even a real attack using chemical weapons.”

Blinken’s remarks build on the Biden administration’s strategy of sharing assessments of intelligence, without providing specific pieces of evidence, to deter Russia from carrying out the actions and draw attention to what the U.S. says is Russia’s playbook of using campaigns of disinformation to obscure its military action.

The secretary further said Russian state-run media is amplifying warnings of a potential attack on Russians and that in the event of a “fabricated” crisis, the Russian government may “theatrically convene emergency meetings” and declare it necessary to “defend Russian citizens or ethnic Russians in Ukraine.”

He added Moscow’s attack plans include that “Russian missiles and bombs will drop across Ukraine, communications will be jammed, cyberattacks will shut down key Ukrainian institutions” and a ground invasion will “advance on key targets that have already been identified and mapped out in detailed plans.”

These plans include targeting the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Blinken said, a city of 2.8 million people. He also said Russia “will target specific groups of Ukrainians.”

Blinken said he was sharing such a detailed assessment with the Security Council to deter Russia, as U.S. officials say Russia has massed enough military infrastructure to launch an invasion at any time, on any day. President Biden on Thursday said the threat of a Russian invasion “is very high.”

Blinken on Thursday addressed criticisms by those recalling the George W. Bush administration delivering faulty intelligence in the Security Council in 2003 to rally the world to support an invasion against Iraq.

“I’m mindful that some have called into question our information, recalling previous instances where intelligence ultimately did not bear out. But let me be clear, I am here today not to start a war but to prevent one,” Blinken said.

The secretary reinforced U.S. calls for Russia to engage in diplomacy and said he had asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to meet in Europe next week and proposed diplomatic meetings of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-Russia council, and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

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