Aslund: Putin’s “Drone Attack” Likely a False Flag for Propaganda and Power.

Is Putin Following in the Footsteps of Hitler and Stalin?

False-Flag Operations and Putin’s History

Aggressive dictators like to instigate “false flag” operations that they blame on their planned victims. Russian President Vladimir Putin is following the example of his great ideals, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Before Hitler started World War II, he instigated the “Gleiwitz incident.” A small group of German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms seized the German Gleiwitz radio station in the borderlands and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish. Hitler greatly publicized this as his casus belli for attacking Poland in 1939.

In the same fashion, before Stalin attacked Finland in November 1939, he organized a false-flag operation near the Soviet village of Mainila, close to the border with Finland. Four Soviet border guards were killed, according to the Soviets. Stalin used that as casus belli to attack Finland. Research by both Finnish and Russian historians later concluded the shelling was carried out by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police.

Few people are more enamored with false-flag operations than Vladimir Putin. In August 1999, Putin, the almost unknown head of the FSB, the successor of the KGB, was appointed prime minister by the ailing President Boris Yeltsin. In September, four major apartment buildings were blown up in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, killing more than 300 people, and spreading fear in the country. The new prime minister exploited this fear. He blamed the bombings on Chechen “terrorists” and started a bloody war on Chechnya, which boosted his popularity so that he could be elected president in March 2000.

Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelensky denied that they had anything to do with the recent drone attack. Their joint verdict was that they were carried out by the FSB, then headed by Nikolai Patrushev, who is a contemporary of Putin from the KGB in St. Petersburg and currently his national security adviser. He is perceived as one of Putin’s closest advisers.

Why Does Putin Need It?

But why does Putin need it? He has already done whatever war crimes and terror he could in Ukraine with very little success. He has repeatedly tried to kill Zelensky, so what is new? Is he trying to justify his war in Ukraine? Will he do something really terrible that we just cannot think of to celebrate May 9, his proclaimed Victory Day? Unfortunately, we should only expect the worst.

Conclusion

This is simply a Kremlin routine that suits the actor Putin. Nothing hangs together. All Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelensky and down instantly denied they had anything to do with this action, and there is no reason not to believe them. All know that Putin does not sleep in the Kremlin but in his residence outside Moscow. But the question remains, what is Putin’s endgame?

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