Political context

False flag operations under Putin

False flag operations

False flag operations are operations designed to appear to be carried out by others, who are then blamed for it. They are used to legitimize actions against those others.

Stalin is known to have used a false flag operation in 1939 to initiate hostilities in the Russo-Finnish War. On November 26, 1939, Red Army troops shelled the Soviet village of Mainila near Finland. Soviet authorities claimed that Finnish troops had fired the shots. The Finnish government offered to submit to a neutral investigation into the incident, but Stalin declined. Four days later, Red Army troops entered Finland and began a war in violation of the two countries' non-aggression pact.

The war would end in mid-March with a negotiated settlement in which Finland ceded about 10 percent of its territory to the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin may have used a false flag operationtwice twice to start a war: first in 1999 to launch the Second Chechen War and win the upcoming presidential election, and in 2014 to «legitimise» the Russian military presence in Ukraine's Donbas.

There may be many other incidents that can be confirmed as false flag operations, such as the gruesome executions of 501 civilians and associated looting in Butcha, Ukraine, in March and April 2022, the drone attacks on the Moscow Kremlin in May 2023, and others. We continue to verify the facts and sources of a number of such incidents. As they become sufficiently verifiable, they will be added to this section of the website..