In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don't exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

"As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.

"We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine."

"Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine," Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday.

"In fact, we have information that they've pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in."

The US government has substantiated these incendiary claims with the usual amount of evidence, by which I of course mean jack dick nothingballs. The mass media have not been dissuaded from reporting on this issue by the complete absence of any evidence that this Kremlin false flag plot is in fact a real thing that actually happened, their journalistic standards completely satisfied by the fact that their government instructed them to report it. Countless articles and news segments containing the phrase "false flag" have been blaring throughout all the most influential news outlets in the western world without the slightest hint of skepticism.