❗️ See for yourselves what the collective Western media and officials’ words are worth. pic.twitter.com/m6IUaPnUsp
— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) February 16, 2022
Perhaps the most outspoken Russian official of them all is Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who’s biting sarcasm invoked memes popular on social media. He had stated that the West had lacked basic upbringing in its attempts to predict Russia’s plans, predictions which have not produced any accurate reports about the supposedly imminent invasion.
The trolling had just begun. The Russian Embassy in South America tweeted a meme using Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega, played by John Travolta, who looks around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capitol looking for the Russian invasion. This meme is quite well-known, which is probably why the tweet went viral.
16 February 2022. Meanwhile in Ukraine@mfa_russia pic.twitter.com/59xuQjqSjQ
— Russian Embassy in South Africa 🇷🇺 (@EmbassyofRussia) February 16, 2022
The Russian government has always denied its plans to invade Ukraine in the past despite the United States and other western countries believing that a threat was “immediate.” In fact, the threat was so immediate according to US intelligence that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had recommended that all 30,000 Americans living and working in Ukraine evacuate immediately. The US government also destroyed classified information in the US Embassy in Kyiv in evacuating its personnel while maintaining a small consulate in Lviv, in the western portion of Ukraine, in case there is a need for emergency communications with the country. The majority of this information has been said to be raw, often just satellite images without any official releases of intelligence about any potential invasion from the U.S.
By contrast, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Soviets appeared before the UN General Assembly after making public denials that Russia had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson invited Soviet Ambassador Zorin to repeat that denial again. When Zorin refused to answer, Stevenson produced reconnaissance photos that showed the missiles and launchers in place on Cuban soil. This meeting at the UN was on TV all over the world and the United States dealt the decisive blow to Russian denials with hard evidence of their lies.
Perhaps inviting more mockery, the United States along with its western allies have recalibrated the narrative that an invasion of Ukraine was “imminent” for several weeks, to new claims that the invasion would occur “any day now.”
Together with these reports of the day of national unity, the Russians claim that they have partially withdrawn some Russian troops stationed at the Russian border, with intelligence reports stating that 2 units had departed from Crimea to return to their home bases.
The heightened tensions in the region are becoming more confused, with the United States and other western countries stating that a Russian invasion is “very much probable” or that invasion is “imminent,” while Russia denies having such plans and claims to be reducing the number of troops deployed.
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