VLADIMIR Putin may be preparing a “false flag” attack as a pretext for a military operation against the West.
In a post on X, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has warned that recent Kremlin rhetoric could be laying the groundwork for a provocation.
His comments come after the dictator warned that Russia could respond to attacks on its territory if drones were launched from European states.
“They understand that retaliation will follow. I think everyone understands this, or should understand it,” Putin said on Tuesday.
Sikorski said this sounds like “an announcement of a provocation.”
“I expect an attack on Russian territory under a false flag, to which Putin will ‘respond’,” he wrote.
Sikorski pointed out that this would be a case of history repeating itself.
The Polish minister drew a disturbing parallel to the 1939 Gleiwitz incident during World War II – one of the most famous “false flag” attacks in recent history.
Operation Himmler, a series of covert undertakings orchestrated by Nazis to fabricate Polish aggression against German territory.
The event was subsequently used by Hitler as part of the justification for the invasion of Poland.
“I would remind you that in August 1939 the Abwehr [Germany’s central military intelligence service] staged a Polish attack on the radio station in Gleiwitz in order to create a pretext for war,” Sikorski said.
Polish officials have repeatedly warned about the possibility of Russian sabotage, hybrid warfare and disinformation operations targeting NATO.
This comes after Putin accused the West of plotting to go to war with Russia, telling future armed forces and intelligence officers they face the prospect of fighting against NATO.
He said: “We see that while NATO countries previously limited themselves to supporting the Kyiv regime, which came to power through an illegal armed coup.
“Now the West is openly saying they are preparing for war with us and are increasing their offensive military budgets.
“To justify such expenditures and the radical militarisation of their states, the leaders of NATO countries and the EU, as before, are using false claims about an alleged Russian military threat.”
Russia has long conducted such operations to portray itself or its allies as victims – and create a pretext for war.
In 2008, the Kremlin accused Georgia of starting a military attack and of committing genocide in the South Ossetia region – as a result of which, it deployed its “peacekeepers”.
Similarly, in 2014, Russian propaganda claimed that ethnic Russians were oppressed in eastern Ukraine.
That same groundwork was then used as a pretext for the 2022 full-scale invasion.
Russia has also ramped up its brazen nuclear war threats, attempting to spook NATO.
State television military expert Colonel Yuri Knutov said: “The time has come to at least use tactical nuclear weapons at the level of 152-millimetre shells, so that defences in a number of areas of the front can be broken through, safely overcome, and we reach the Dnieper River.”
He justified this by pointing to Ukraine’s “increase in strikes, drones, and cruise missiles, which we’re now seeing—a colossal increase, over the last month and a half….”
Praising Knutov, the Kremlin’s leading TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, another advocate of nuclear strikes, said: “Our club of nuclear maniacs has grown.”
And Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying about nuclear weapons: “Well, I would still use them.”
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