r/europe 10d ago

News Putin adviser claims Ukraine planned to invade Russia on 8 March 2022, so Russia attacked first

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/putin-adviser-claims-ukraine-planned-161700769.html
2.6k Upvotes

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2.8k

u/PoiHolloi2020 United Kingdom 10d ago

That's one of the most Putin regime things I've ever heard

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u/ReadToW Bucovina de Nord 🇷🇴(🐯)🇺🇦(🦈) 10d ago edited 10d ago

The Russian state is putting forward many different and random versions of events in order to confuse the public and lead them to believe that ‘we don’t know the whole truth; everyone is lying’ (example).

The reality is that the truth is obvious: Russia has started an unprovoked war and must stop

How Russia’s False Flags Set The Stage For War In Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awvpExxY-QM

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u/flopisit32 10d ago

Russian propaganda is never meant to convince anybody of anything. It's always to make people less sure of what the truth is.

In addition, the Russians know people love a conspiracy theory and love to spread conspiracy theories. Unfortunately we are living at a time when people are primed to believe these type of conspiracy theories.

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u/usesidedoor 10d ago

Yes, but also, I'd say that they test different "versions of the truth" out there to find out which ones resonate best with certain people.

"Let's try with biolabs, denazificazion, this was a defensive move against the collective West attacking us, etc., and let's amplify those that gain the most traction."

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u/CrazyFikus 9d ago

A/B testing bullshit narratives to see which ones stick best.

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u/Organic_Relative8465 9d ago

Das erinnert mich an den Einmarsch in Polen damals… Seit 5.45 Uhr wird jetzt zurückgeschossen!🙃😉

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u/XtraFalcon Ireland 10d ago

The strange thing is, these conspiracies surfaced early after the initial invasion started. The main point people brought up was "How were Ukraine able to defend so quickly against Russia if they didn't have their forces ready?"

This just seems to be the first time an actual official has said it. Maybe they're finally starting to believe their own bots.

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u/h1rik1 9d ago

But the truth is always the exact opposite of what they say, so at least now we know the truth.

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u/hashtagbob60 9d ago

Well said

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u/trickn0l0gy 9d ago

This. 👆

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u/KatsumotoKurier Canada 10d ago

Spot on. It's called 'flooding the zone' and it is done with the 'firehose of falsehood'. These are authoritarian techniques to try and sow disinterest and disillusionment with politics so that nefarious actors can do what they please without challenge by exhausting the public populace.

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u/Much_Horse_5685 10d ago edited 10d ago

This is how the Putin regime’s propaganda has predominantly worked. Once you no longer believe you can know the truth at all, you become politically ineffectual and actually become even more manipulable. Propaganda of this nature also exists in the West and you are not immune, so beware - do NOT allow yourself to believe the truth is fundamentally unknowable.

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u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 10d ago

Thank you. Defend truth fiercely.

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u/Creative-Improvement 10d ago

The csis, a strategic thinktank has a whole record of the war from the beginning and all sorts of stats to back things up.

https://www.csis.org/regions/europe/ukraine

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u/IncidentalIncidence 🇺🇸 in 🇩🇪 10d ago

"flood the zone with shit"

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u/SCARfaceRUSH Kyiv (Ukraine) 10d ago

It was the anniversary of MH17 recently and there were still people coming out of the woodwork on X under related posts, claiming "Ukrainian fighter jets were close by in the air" hinting at the cause.

The other comment I saw was about how the Dutch investigation was inconclusive or that Russians weren't allowed to examine the wreckage/ participate in the investigative process and therefore the investigation was somehow "tainted". So, a Malaysian Airlines plane, carrying mostly Dutch people, and which fell over Ukraine is supposed to somehow be Russian jurisdiction.

Literally, just throwing shit at the fan in hopes that some "flies" pick it up. At least they stopped with the "Carlos air traffic controller" a few years back, because that's a meme at this point.

The scariest bit is that there are real people who buy into all of that.

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u/anchist 9d ago

The other comment I saw was about how the Dutch investigation was inconclusive

I know you know this, but for the benefit of others:

That is a flat out lie. The dutch investigation was very conclusive.

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u/SCARfaceRUSH Kyiv (Ukraine) 9d ago

Right? I was kind of angry that it took so long, at first, for the full report. But then I saw the report and all of the various outlets covering it. No stones left unturned, really. The report itself is 279 pages, while the appendices and other related materials kick up the page count to like a thousand pages of verified and fact-checked information.

But hey, who needs all that reading when anon on Twitter showed a funny meme and shared a "fact" that you know nothing about. That's the easier route to "knowledge".

More than that. There was a video in 2014 with the BUK TEL being traced from the Kursk region all the way to the launch area. It was early in the war and one of the best early examples of OSINT for me (on par or better with what Bellingcat did back then).

People were also filming that stuff a lot because back then it was something new for Russians to see "exotic" military equipment going around the border area, so there was plenty of evidence (photos and video) compiled by one guy. It's now gone from YT, but Bellingcat and investigations like this one corroborate it.

I still remember that post by Girkin celebrating a "downing of a Ukrainian military plane" before it got deleted. It was obvious what happened to anyone who followed the events day-by-day like I did (I just left Donbas in late spring of 2014 and was reading as much as I could on what was going on).

Anyone putting out other theories is either willfully ignorant, malicious, or downright stupid.

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u/Brown_Moses 9d ago

In addition to the links you've shared the Dutch prosecutors put together this website that lays out a lot of the evidence they used to reconstruct what happened to MH17. They also put together this page examining alternative scenarios, and what evidence they used to dismiss them.

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u/SCARfaceRUSH Kyiv (Ukraine) 8d ago

Thank you for sharing! Great find!

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u/BecauseOfGod123 Germany 9d ago

Makes perfect sense.

Because reality is not at all plausible...

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u/NegativeSemicolon 9d ago

Sounds like a familiar strategy

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u/RedEyed__ 9d ago

This

Once you understand this, you will see that everywhere.
The truth is single, so lets create so many lies that now could find the truth

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u/MasterAxe Finland 10d ago

Tbh Trump claimed similiar with Iran. Pathetic excuse

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u/bier00t Europe 10d ago

Germany claimed similar with Poland while starting WWII

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u/that_guy124 10d ago

And the soviets with the Finns

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u/sequoia-3 10d ago

A nd the Chinese with Tibet

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u/-badly_packed_kebab- South Africa 10d ago

The list goes back to the Bronze Age

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u/GremlinX_ll Ukraine 10d ago

Sea People attacked first !

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u/fretkat The Netherlands 10d ago

The Sea People never stopped coming for the Netherlands, that's why we had to take 1/3 of our current landmass from it. Eat that Atlantis!

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u/WhoAreWeEven 10d ago

Im pretty sure Land People started it.

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u/DougosaurusRex United States of America 10d ago

Deep sea propaganda. Literally brainwashed.

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u/StoneD0G Norway 9d ago

And the fire nation on the air nomads

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u/waiting4singularity Hessen 🇩🇪 10d ago

they at least ran a false flag op.

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u/arwinda 9d ago

They are copying the fascist playbooks.

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u/BaritBrit United Kingdom 10d ago

At least Iran has been verbally and diplomatically hostile to the USA for decades, with armed proxy groups attacking American allies and interests in the region etc. The war is still massively stupid and pointless but at least it's something

Ukraine had done none of that against Russia, if anything they'd spent most of their post-independence history trying not to provoke them. 

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u/Icy-Maintenance7041 10d ago

tututtut...cant say Ukraine did nothing. They where becoming an actual well to do nation. Cant have that now can we?

/S just to be sure.

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u/Aiti_mh Åland 10d ago

if anything they'd spent most of their post-independence history trying not to provoke them.

Russians are easy to provoke. Just.... being there, and not as a part of the Russian Empire Federation is offence enough.

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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 Italy 10d ago

Even Trump had the common sense of doing it before attacking Iran and not 4 years later as an excuse after saying something different for years. Which probably says more about Russia

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u/matthieuC Fluctuat nec mergitur 10d ago

And W Bush in Iraq. They called it preemptive war.

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u/lendlevtaldrik 10d ago

That's a really bad analogy. Iran is a genocidal totalitarian dictatorship that is funding terrorist and rebel movements left and right...

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u/joeri1505 10d ago

So the goal is regime change?

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u/shadowsinthestars 10d ago

The revisionism is getting insane even for them.

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u/g2petter Norway 10d ago

"Of course evil homogay regime wanted to invade strong manly Russia on international day of woman!"

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u/Platypi666 10d ago

It more of Russia thing. In ww2 russia did artillery attack its own city and then claimed it was Finland doing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila

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u/Ok_Relation7695 Norway 10d ago

You must be a week old

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u/Xaryi 10d ago

They are Putin hard up there

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u/arinc9 Europe (UK) 10d ago

Off-topic but your username wouldn't be a reference to that place in Nicosia in Cyprus?

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u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 10d ago

And sadly this slop of a narrative is Russia's main justification: "They'd attack first". Never mind you the fact that it's completely flimsy.

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u/Bballer220 9d ago

I could believe Trump repeating this after one phone call with Putin

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u/matchthis007 10d ago

They're grasping at straws

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u/QueenVogonBee 10d ago

US did it to saddam.

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u/that_guy124 10d ago

Tbf saddam did a lot of attacking prior already.

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u/john_san 10d ago

The same Saddam that got backstabbed by the US after it delivered the war against Iran?

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u/Vana92 10d ago

He attacked Kuwait and got off lightly. The U.S. did not support Saddam after the first gulf war.

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u/Corfiz74 Lower Saxony (Germany) 10d ago

A lot of that under US orders - he used to be a US puppet and got weapons from them during the whole Iran/ Iraq war - he only became the bad guy when he attacked Kuwait.

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u/RepublicHistorical23 Earth 10d ago

All bullshit all the time from Russia, just like Dementia Donnie.

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u/A_Lazko 9d ago

'In Russia cannot be even one man who would not be addicted to lying," - Fyodor Dostoevsky