There are a few credible examples:

In 1999,a series of four deadly apartment bombings in Russia were blamed,with no evidence,on Chechen terrorists. When an unexploded fifth bomb was found in the basement of another building,it was linked to a Russian intelligence operative,later arrested and released. Even as the public sought answers,Putin made revengeagainst Chechen terrorists a campaign pledge,helping ensure his presidential victory in 2000.

In 2008,Russia sent journalists into the Russian enclave of South Ossetia in Georgia where they broadcast stories of Georgian forces committing “genocide” against ethnic Russians. The Russian military was amassed at the border. Inflated death tolls of Russians were used as part of the pretext for Russia’s involvement in the war.

A false-flag attack was reportedly used by Nazi Germany to create the pretext for the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. The Gestapo (not gazpacho) raided a German-language radio station at Gleiwitz near the border with Poland,leaving behind corpses meant to look like Polish saboteurs.

It can also happen online. In 2015,a French TV broadcaster,TV5Monde,had its hardware destroyed by malware from a group called the Cyber Caliphate. Later,forensics traced the attack back to Russia’s Fancy Bear hacking group.

Coming only months after the Islamic StateCharlie Hebdo attacks,analysts speculated the Kremlin hid their tracks to test new hacking tools,while diverting blame to IS.

Violent false-flag operations have a special role in shifting public perceptions,which may help explain why Russian operativeswould attempt one in Ukraine,and why the US would move quickly to expose it to the global public.

If you’ve heard the term “false flag” bandied about before the recent mentions of the Ukraine crisis,it may be thanks toAlex Jones and other online conspiracy theorists.

They have discovered the power of dismissing real violence as false flag – generating more distrust,angst,and eh...web-traffic.

Historically,the term was,until recently,hardly known outside the realm of war and espionage. Nevertheless,the charge of something being a false flag is powerful on its own.

In April 2013,after two Chechen Kyrgyzstani-American brothers organised the deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon,Jones tweeted:“Our hearts go out to those that are hurt or killed #Boston marathon - but this thing stinks to high heaven #falseflag”.

This frequent accusation that real life attacks such as at Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 were “false flag” has been effective for creating chaos online.

On the ground in Ukraine,however,the prospect of real-life violence has prompted the US to call out the acts.

Psychological and propaganda operations undertaken by Western militaries are usually done in a limited fashion with strong internal oversights.

In contrast,the Russian military tends to use propaganda aggressively from the start of a mission.

The US (and allies) found that out the hard way whenRussia took over Crimea in 2014 and got involved in theSyrian War on the side of Bashar al-Assad.

In both cases,even though the Kremlin lied about its military activities,Western allies hesitated to challenge Moscow’s account of events. Doing so would mean potentially revealing Western intelligence sources.

This time,the US and Britain have been much quicker to declassify and publicise the Kremlin’s suspected plans.

In November,US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned:“Our concern is that Russia may make a serious mistake of attempting to rehash what it undertook back in 2014...” referring to the stealthtakeover of the Crimea region from Ukraine. “The playbook that we’ve seen in the past was to claim some provocation as a rationale for doing what it ... intended and planned to do.”

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