False Flags

Dylan Combellick
6 min readMay 4, 2023

There is a tradition of false flag attacks in immoral regimes that manifests itself in both staged acts of real violence and in imaginary slights and feigned injury. Both types of events serve a similar purpose — to justify acts of violence and retribution against the real target. The targets are almost always less powerful, more peaceful, and not at all an actual threat to those who engage in performative victimhood.

In Russia in 1999 there was a series of apartment bombings that were publicly blamed on Chechen terrorists and the need to protect “innocent Russian civilians" from these “terrorists" played a substantial role in Putin’s rise to prominence and power. The bombings were carried out by the FSB (Russian FBI/CIA), Russians killing Russians so that Russians could kill more people who didn’t want to be Russian anymore.

Eight years later and the false Flags started again, this time in Georgia, where false protests were set up against Georgian government policies, and Russians acting as Georgians attacked them to set up the false protestors as victims. This was then used to justify an invasion in which many Georgians died, including many “ethnic Russians", all to prevent Georgia from joining NATO and signing trade deals with the west. Russians killing Russians so that Russians could kill more people who didn’t want to be Russian anymore.

Six years later and more false flags, this time in Ukraine. The incident in Odessa, where a group of Russians (posing as Crimeans) attacked some Ukrainian protestors, who then regrouped and chased…

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Dylan Combellick

Retired analyst, Russian linguist, and New START inspector, father of 3, living in Uzhgorod, Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/@DylanC78