As fears grow that Russia is on the brink of invading Ukraine, the State Department is telling Americans to get out now.
The State Department has ordered families of U.S. Embassy personnel in Ukraine to start fleeing beginning Monday, according to Fox News. Ukraine is seven hours ahead of the United States’ Eastern Time zone, meaning evacuations could begin when it’s still Sunday in Washington.
Other Americans in Ukraine will be encouraged to start leaving the country next week on commercial flights, “while those are still available,” one official said, according to Fox.
The Biden administration on Thursday accused Moscow of planning a staged mass casualty event on Russia by Ukraine, in order to justify a further Russian invasion of its former Soviet neighbor.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that the intelligence had been newly declassified and presented to the press corps in the hopes that its publication would deter Russia from following through on the planned false-flag operation.
"The United States has information that Russia is planning to stage fabricated attacks by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces as a pretext for a further invasion of Ukraine," Price said in a Thursday briefing to reporters.
"One possible option that the Russians are considering and which we made public today involves the production of a propaganda video — a video with graphic scenes of false explosions, depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners and images of destroyed locations or military equipment, entirely fabricated by Russian intelligence."
