As the conflict in eastern Ukraine heats up, Britain and the US suspect Russia of planning false flag attacks to create a pretext for an invasion.
Russian-backed separatists have already accused the Ukrainian military of a series of highly dubious attacks and are now urging civilians in the occupied territories to leave the country.
A false flag is a political or military action taken with the intention of blaming an opponent.
Nations have often done this by staging a real or simulated attack on their own side and claiming the enemy did it, as a pretext for war.
The term was first used in the 16th century to describe pirates raising the flag of a friendly nation to entice merchant ships to approach them.
False flag attacks have a long and undignified history.
The night before the German invasion of Poland, seven German SS soldiers posing as Poles stormed the Gleiwitz radio tower on the German side of the border with Poland. They sent a short message to say that the station was now in Polish hands.
The soldiers also left behind the body of a civilian disguised as a Polish soldier to make it appear as if he had been killed in the raid.
Adolf Hitler gave a speech the next day citing the Gleiwitz attack and other similarly orchestrated incidents to justify the invasion of Poland.
In the same year, the Russian village of Mainila came under shell fire. It was close to the Finnish border, and the Soviet Union used the alleged attack to break its non-aggression pact with Finland and start the so-called Winter War.
Historians have now concluded that the shelling of the village was not carried out by the Finnish army but was an invention of the Soviet state security NKVD.
Boris Yeltsin, the first President of the Russian Federation, admitted in 1994 that the Winter War was a Soviet war of aggression.
On August 2, 1964, a naval battle broke out between a US destroyer and North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin off the Vietnamese coast.
Both sides sustained damage to their ships and the North Vietnamese lost four men and suffered six other casualties.
The US National Security Agency claimed another similar battle took place two days later.
However, it is now likely that the second attack by the North Vietnamese never happened.
The captain of a US Navy destroyer initially reported being surrounded and fired upon by enemy torpedo boats, but later said he could not be sure it was him because of bad weather and poor visibility.
Declassified documents released in 2005 indicate that the North Vietnamese Navy did not attack the US ship but attempted to salvage two of the boats damaged on August 2.
However, President Lyndon B. Johnson and associates chose to believe the original version of events and presented the events to Congress as two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnam on US forces.
It led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed President Johnson to launch bombing raids on North Vietnam and greatly escalate US military involvement in the Vietnam War.
In the early days of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, people appeared on the streets dressed and armed exactly like Russian soldiers, but without Russian insignia on their uniforms.
The Kremlin insisted they were members of local “self-defense groups” who wanted the territory returned from Ukrainian control to Russia.
The Kremlin said they bought their clothes and equipment in stores.
Russian journalists called these people “polite men,” while Crimean residents called them “little green men,” referring both to the color of their uniforms and to their unconfirmed origins.
India and Pakistan have often accused each other of conducting false flag attacks along the disputed border with Kashmir to provoke a military clash.
In 2020, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry accused Indian troops of firing on a vehicle carrying UN monitors on the Pakistani side of the border, hoping the UN could hold Pakistani troops responsible.
India is trying to sow discord between Pakistan and the international community, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan called the move “reckless”.
India denied the allegation and in turn accused Pakistan of not keeping its own side of the border secure.
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