"I would assume that the US has no intelligence demonstrating what it is claiming," says Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief and military intelligence officer. "[State Department spokesman] Ned Price, who called his statement a 'declassified claim' could not answer reasonable questions from a journalist and even accused the man of being a Russian propagandist. We have reached the point in the United States where we cannot believe anything the government claims to be true."
On 3 February, Price was confronted by Associated Press reporter Matt Lee, who mocked the State Department spokesperson for getting into “Alex Jones territory” by spreading conspiracy theories not backed by any evidence. Price insisted that the US story about a Russian video fake was "derived from information known to the US government, intelligence information that we have declassified," but failed to provide any proof or details.
US officials' recent assumption evokes strong memories of "fabricated information and out-and-out lies that led to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003," according to the CIA veteran. Giraldi notes that any false flag operation on the part of Russia does not make any sense given that even Ukrainian President Zelensky has conceded that Russia is not planning on attacking Ukraine.
"Why would Russia want to take over and have to run a country that is the poorest in Europe and riddled with corruption?" asks the former CIA officer. "The claim that Russia has prepared a false flag video showing an alleged attack by Ukrainian soldiers on Donbas is laughable, not worth serious consideration."
4 February 2022, 13:09 GMT
It has long become the State Department's "playbook" to not provide any evidence to back its stories, says Michael Springmann, former American diplomat and political analyst, referring to the US' handling of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya's affairs.
"You try to create a story to tell with no evidence behind it, and of course, as long as you can do this and get away with it, you can do pretty much what you want," Springmann says. "And none of the journalists… in the United States and Europe are asking questions like: 'Well, where is the proof?' You claimed proof in Iraq, that they had weapons of mass destruction and it wasn't there. Now you're doing the same thing with Ukraine and with Russia. Where is the proof? Where is the documentation? We want something other than opinion. And, of course, they never do it because they can't."
To complicate matters further, the US intelligence services "are far too politicised and work more for the politicians than to collect information and analyse it dispassionately," the former diplomat stresses.
Why is the Biden Administration Peddling "Russian Scare"?
The "Russia invasion" narrative is being "forced" by the Biden administration as it has found itself in serious trouble with voters in the US over both domestic and foreign policy issues, according to Philip Giraldi.
"[Joe] Biden and [Antony] Blinken are trying to look tough against Russia to build support among their critics and unfortunately they have enough Republicans willing to go along with the farce because they too like to look tough," the CIA veteran remarks.
Michael Springmann says that several factors are at play. First, Biden's position in the polls is dropping. Second, the US president packed his foreign policy section of the government with "fanatics" like Victoria Nuland and "hardliners" like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
As the US government is floundering, they need a foreign enemy to divert the public attention from Biden's domestic failures, according to the analyst. What's more, not only the US but European countries are also undergoing some sort of socio-economic crisis amid the pandemic, he notes.
"All of the countries in Europe and in North America are obsessed with the virus and can't see anything else except the virus, and people are getting outraged at this, at the controls, at the lockdowns, at the stripping of their civil rights," he says.
Russia has been used as a "foreign enemy" and convenient distraction for quite a while by the US and the EU, according to Springmann.
"Even through the Trump administration, the Democrats have screamed blue bloody murder that the Russians were interfering in American elections," Springmann says. "And now that Victoria Nuland is back in power after she and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama destroyed Ukraine by creating this overthrow of the government and replacing it with a gang of neo-Nazis, they see that this is a way to weaken Russia to push the boundaries of NATO closer and closer to Russia… So I think in general, it's a combination of fanatical neocons-Democrats who see Russia as the source of all evil in the world, and Biden's floundering political position."