Americans are being hit with an unrelenting barrage of war propaganda. The scaremongering about a supposed Russian invasion of Ukraine intensified overnight with new stories appearing in the New York Times and the Washington Post — stories which were then widely covered by other media — based on leaks from the Thursday, Feb. 3 briefings to Congress by Secretary of State Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley.
“Senior Biden administration officials told lawmakers this past week that they believed the Russian military had assembled 70% of the forces it would need to mount a full invasion of Ukraine, painting the most ominous picture yet of the options that Russia’s President, Vladimir V. Putin, has created for himself in recent weeks,” the Times breathlessly reported. “During six hours of closed meetings with House and Senate lawmakers on Thursday, the officials warned that if Mr. Putin chose the most aggressive of his options, he could quickly surround or capture Kiev, the capital, and remove the country’s democratically elected President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They also warned that the invasion could prompt an enormous refugee crisis on the European continent, sending millions fleeing.”
The Times asserts that the officials said they still don’t know if Putin had made a final decision to invade. “But satellite imagery, communications among Russian forces and images of Russian equipment on the move show that he has assembled everything he would need to undertake what the officials said would constitute the largest military operation on land in Europe since 1945.”
They also put out scary estimates for casualties: 25,000 to 50,000 civilians dead, 5,000 to 25,000 Ukrainian troops killed, along with 3,000 to 10,000 Russian troops killed. “The invasion, they said, could also result in 1 million to 5 million refugees, with many of them pouring into Poland.”
