Page 233 - Pretext News Today

Led us to investigate possible illegal activity alongside his legitimate business. we operated under the pretext of wanting to start a breeding farm. the conversation started over legal captive—bred parrots, but faiz was also prepared to sell us wild african greys. he was confident that he would be able to get around customs import restrictions, and also advised it would be a lucrative business.

>> the timeline of all of this and the diplomatic conversation is less of a concern than the timeline of their constant and continued deployments of forces. we expect the russians to come back some time early next week to talk about next steps. we expect the diplomatic conversations to continue should they choose to go down that path with us. but were very much preparing for the possibility that they are, as you say, using this only as a pretext. were going to be ready for that path too. and giv...

Line of attack or course of action the russians could choose to take. they could also choose to move in other parts of ukraine as well. the last point i would make, and i know this has been a subject of a fair amount of back and forth between the administration and the press over the course of the past week, we are firmly convined the russians, should they decide to move forward with the invasion are looking forward to a false pretext, a false flag, something they create and blame on the ukraini...

Suspicion that the [inaudible] pretext to invade. [inaudible] that it is possible that he rolls tanks into kyiv and that he is disappointed that his previous invasion of ukraine did not change ukraine. it continues to move towards the west philosophically and politically. it wants to be part of europe and not the eurasian union and under the thumb of putin. sadly, i think that this is likely. the administration is doing everything possible, i think, to deter putin by sending ukrainians, by movin...

Belarusian joint exercises with russia to the north that were mentioned in that report, but there is also growing tension to the south. russia has put out a warning saying it is planning to carry out naval drills, missile drills in the black sea and ac that runs along ukraines south coast. dimitrov says thatis ukraines south coast. dimitrov says that is actually a pretext for blocking ukrainian ports, which would put not only a military squeeze on things, but an economic one as well, so he is wo...

The threat of invasion is postponed, pointing to the fact that this threat has been looming in december through january. now were in february. but the threat persists noting the 130,000 estimated russian troops on three sides of ukraines border. chris? >> admiral, very colorful language from that restaurant owner that he believes his neighbors are insane, and that would play into what were hearing from the state department about this intelligence they say shows, and weve seen this before, that r...

But i do think that it could go, you know, i dont want to rule out the option that there might be dialogue. its interesting that this happened on the -- right after the putin/biden call which the russians said biden laid out options for answering russian demands. and so you can kind of see putin setting this up as like a statesman. were listening. and that fits very much with the russian narrative that were the ones, russia, have reasonable demands. its ukrainians and the u.s. that are the warmo...

What were trying to do, the united states, is take away from vladimir putin the pretext that somehow russia is the victim, that ukraine is initiating the crisis. so the administration has stayed one step ahead. most recently its been the charge that war could be imminent, which is a way of saying weve got lots of warning indicators that russia is at a point that if they were -- if they wanted to launch a war they could, and i think this has been an attempt to wrong-foot vladimir putin. at the en...

Protecting democracy and human rights. while the u.s. allies with ukraine were not mentioned in the statement tension was between the lines as the pentagon revealed it has evidence of a moscow plan to fake a ukrainian attack on russia. >> we know they are thinking about doing it. its one of other things we know they are trying to do to create a pretext for an invasion. >> u.s. and european efforts for the dartmouth diplomatic solution continued french president has spoken to putin three times si...

Pretext foreign invasion. one option is the russian government, we think, is planning to stage a fake attack by ukrainen military or intelligence forces by russian sovereign territory. we believe russia would produce a graphic propaganda video that 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. >> and as administration officials continue to digest the details of this plot, the first of 3,0...