Boris Johnson has claimed the shelling of a nursery school in the Donbas region of Ukraine by Russian-backed separatists was a “false-flag operation” aimed at discrediting the Ukrainian government.
According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) there were “multiple shelling incidents” on Thursday morning across the frontline in eastern Ukraine.
Three people were injured in the attack in the city of Stanytsia Luhanska, which blew a hole through the wall of a nursery.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, accused the Russian side of “provocative shelling”.
Speaking on a visit to RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire, the UK prime minister said: “Today, as I’m sure you’ve already picked up, a kindergarten was shelled in what we are taking to be – well, we know – was a false-flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians, designed to create a pretext, a spurious provocation for Russian action.
“We fear very much that that is the kind of thing we will see more of over the next few days.”
A “false-flag” incident is one in which its origin is disguised, usually in an attempt to provoke retaliation.
A false-flag operation is when an attack is staged in such a way that blame falls on a different party. False-flag attacks can often take the form of arson or sabotage. The objective can be to sow distrust, confusion and fear, or to provide the people secretly carrying out the acts with the pretext for further action.
A famous example from history is the Gleiwitz incident in 1939. An attack on a radio tower in Upper Silesia by covert German forces was publicly blamed by the Nazi authorities on Polish forces. It was then used as a false example of Polish aggression, which the Nazis claimed justified their invasion of Poland the following day, sparking the second world war.
The origin of the phrase comes from the naval practice of flying a friendly flag on a ship in order to move closer to a target without raising suspicion, before attacking.
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, had said earlier that shelling across the border indicated Moscow was carrying out “false-flag operations”, though he did not point specifically to the nursery shelling.
Johnson said he would be travelling to Munich for the European security conference this weekend, “to talk about what we are going to do to unify the west”.
He said the UK was prepared to impose tough sanctions on Russia.
“There is still time for the Putin regime to step back. There is still time to avoid a catastrophe; a catastrophe for Russia, a catastrophe for Ukraine and for the world.
“If Russia were so mad as to invade, I don’t think people should imagine that this would be a brief business. This would be a bloody and protracted conflict in which, I’m afraid, there will be many casualties, and including many Russian casualties.”
Western security officials have been monitoring the shelling in Donbas closely, saying it was “the sort of provocation that has the potential to escalate”, while also stressing that exchanges of fire across the line of control in eastern Ukraine were not uncommon.
One official said similar hostilities had been seen previously and it was not uncommon for issues to “flash up and go away”. Another concluded: “I’m not saying this is a pretext, but I didn’t say it wasn’t a pretext.”
Meanwhile Liz Truss said in a speech in Kyiv that the free world needed to “wise up” about Russian aggression, draw a line under a decade of drift and recognise the Ukraine crisis was a litmus test of the west’s ability to stand up to aggressors, authoritarians and autocrats everywhere.
In an address with deliberate echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s rhetoric, the UK foreign secretary said the trial of strength would require greater cooperation with Britain’s Nato partners, including with the European Union.
“If we hang back, that would only embolden the bullies in their campaign against sovereignty and the right of self-determination,” she said. “We must stand up to and defuse Russian aggression now, because if we don’t it will embolden not only the Kremlin, but aggressors, authoritarians and autocrats everywhere.
“Bullies only respond to strength,” she said, adding that Russia would acquire pariah status if Putin went ahead with an invasion of Ukraine.
Truss was in Kyiv to meet Ukraine’s foreign secretary, Dmytro Kuleba, and launch a new trilateral partnership between Poland, Ukraine and the UK designed to maintain Ukraine’s military security and energy security, and combat disinformation.
In an uncompromising speech that continues to signal Britain’s determination to be at the helm of the alliance confronting Russia, she said the UK was open to diplomacy, but said: “Accommodating illegitimate Russian concerns would not make their threats disappear. Instead Russia would be emboldened.”
Truss said: “The west needs to wise up, and work together to discredit Russian arguments in public. We should use our intelligence strategically to challenge their narrative – as we did last month, exposing the Kremlin’s plan to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv and exposing their military buildup on the border.
“We must strengthen our ties with our friends and partners – and strengthen our shared capabilities. We want to see democracies across Europe and beyond stepping up to the plate. We will work even more closely with our allies, friends and partners, including the EU.
She argued Russia was an aggressor not just in Ukraine, but in Europe more broadly.
“Their campaign of hybrid warfare across Europe has brought cyber-attacks, attempts to undermine elections, and the use of chemical and radiological weapons on the streets of London and Salisbury. They are supporting destabilising mercenaries across Africa.
“They have chipped away at the security architecture that makes us all more secure. I mean everything from developing missiles in violation of the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty … to breaking the commitments they made to Ukraine in Helsinki, Budapest and Minsk.
“And now they have deployed their new generation of intermediate-range missiles, which can launch nuclear and conventional warheads.”
She described this as “one of the most destabilising developments of the last decade”.
