Reporter: “There’s a report that the U.S. has evidence that Russia has developed a plan approved at the highest levels in Moscow to create a pretext for invading Ukraine by falsely pinning the attack on Ukrainian forces. Is that report accurate? Has that intelligence been declassified and what can you tell us?”

John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary: “What I can tell you is, first of all, you know, we’ve discussed this idea of false flags by the Russians before. We’ve made no secret of that. And we do have information that it is, that the Russians are likely to want to fabricate a pretext for an invasion, which again is right out of their playbook. One option is the Russian government, we think, is planning to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory or against Russian speaking people to therefore justify their action. As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment at the hands of Ukraine or the West, even to the point where some of this equipment would be made made to look like it was Western supplied Ukrainian, you know, to Ukraine equipment. So this is and this is just one example that we can talk about today. We’re watching this across the board. We’ve seen these kinds of activity by the Russians in the past, and we believe it’s important when we see it like this and and we can to call it out.”

Reporter: “How do you know that it has been approved at the highest level of the Kremlin, this particular case?”

John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary: “I would just say that our experience is that very little of this nature is is not approved at the highest levels of the Russian government.

Reporter: “And by that, you mean Putin?”

John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary: “The highest levels of the Russian government.”