White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, said that the US and Allies have developed a significant amount of credible intelligence about Russian efforts to use a false pretext to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

Psaki noted at the news briefing that this evidence mirrors both public reporting and Russian accounts in past conflicts.

“A few years ago, for example, Russia’s Defense Ministry falsely claim – accused the United States of running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, enabling Russia’s efforts to destabilize the Georgian government.

Russia also used to fabricate stories in Syria about how attacks on international aid convoys were undertaken by rebels or terrorist, instead of the Assad regime, to enable Russia’s continued support for the Assad government.

If you look back at 2016, the Russian media manufactured a false claim of sexual assault against a Russian émigré named Lisa by German refugees in order to stoke hysteria against Syrian immigrants throughout Europe.

And there’s more.  Russian state television aired a false report that claimed the Ukrainian army had crucified a three-year-old Ukrainian Boy.  That is even more recently,” Jen Psaki said.

According to the Press Secretary, the US is trying to take steps to deny Russia the opportunity to use lies, past tactics, to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

“Our objective is to deny Russia the opportunity to use these lies to justify an invasion of Ukraine and to convey clearly these are actions we’re seeing that are straight out of their playbook.  We’ve seen them run false-flag operations in the past and use confusion to launch military action many times in history,” Psaki said.