Amid False Fears Stoked by Fake News, Obama Quietly Deployed Special Forces Along Russian Border

Lithuania — Time after time, the Washington Post continues to churn out fake stories intimating Russia acted aggressively against the United States, but the articles — from branding over 200 independent media organizations as Russian propagandists, to asserting Russian hackers penetrated Vermont’s power grid — contained zero evidence to back the assertions.

“Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say,” the Post declared in the headline of its article, since fully retracted — after wrongly warping public perception — for being Fake News.

Parroted relentlessly by additional corporate outlets, the Post’s viral articles fed equally vapid claims from the Obama administration that Russia somehow poses an imminent threat — both to the U.S. and NATO allies along the Russian border.

However, with all of these empty allegations of Russian aggression, even the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Petr Pavel, denounced the hysteria, stating, “It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.”

Nevertheless, President Obama has quietly deployed dozens of additional special forces to bolster defense in Lithuania, who ostensibly feels threatened by continued “Russian aggression” after the country ‘took over’ Crimea.

“The United States was the first to offer additional safety assurance measures to the Baltic countries following the deterioration of the security situation in the region after the annexation of the Crimea,” said Asta Galdikaite, Lithuanian Defence Ministry spokeswoman, as cited by the Express.

“US Special Operations Forces presence in Lithuania is one of the deterrents” to thwart aggressive moves by Moscow, she added.

But what the U.S. and allied nations have cited as a military threat from Russia — the deployment of nuclear-capable missile systems to Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania, in November — more accurately constituted President Vladimir Putin’s defensive response to the rapidly increasing NATO presence along its border with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland.

“They’re scared to death of Russia,” head of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, Gen. Raymond T. Thomas, said of the small militaries of the Baltic States, for the New York Times. “They are very open about that. They’re desperate for our leadership,” he continued, adding, “Do the Russians know we’re here? Yes.”

According to the Times,

“In response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the clandestine war in eastern Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s heightened military force on patrol off the coasts of the Baltics and Western Europe, the United States and its NATO allies have bolstered their own military exercises in recent years, and this spring will send battalions of 800 to 1,200 troops to each of the three Baltic States and Poland.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned the rapidly amassing NATO troop presence along Russia’s borders constitutes a direct threat to its sovereignty — and Putin cautioned this could merit a military response.

“If someone threatens our territories, it means that we will have to aim our armed forces accordingly at the territories from where the threat is coming,” he asserted in a press statement in mid-2016. “How else could it be? It is NATO that’s approaching our borders, it’s not like we are moving anywhere.”

However, that admonishment went unheeded by Western nations, and, as The Free Thought Project previously reported,

“Tangibly tempting fate just over a week later, NATO announced the tripling of its 13,000-strong Response Force along member states’ Russian borders to at least 40,000 troops next year — as well as the formation of a new Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, also called Spearhead Force, of an additional 5,000 combat-ready troops.”

With diplomatic relations between the Kremlin and White House sinking to a nadir unprecedented since the time of the original Cold War, deploying an ever-mushrooming number of troops to provoke Russia in the name of defending NATO allies is needlessly playing with fire.

Amid the aforementioned and as-yet unproven allegations The Russians hacked systems of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Obama announced the U.S. would impose sanctions against Russia and expel 35 diplomats.

Thus the world held its breath to see if Moscow would respond in kind — or possibly react militarily — but, despite irate promises from Russian officials for the expulsion of U.S. diplomats, Putin coolly declined diplomatic tit-for-tat.

While Russia and NATO officials might have known these dozens of commandos had been surreptitiously inserted into the military mix in Lithuania, the news has only now been made public knowledge.

Whether or not President-elect Donald Trump will continue increasing U.S. troop numbers in support of this particular NATO operation remains unknown, as he previously expressed ambivalence toward the Baltic states.

Just weeks remain for the outgoing, apparently Russophobic Obama administration — plenty of time for the Washington Post and the rest of corporate media to continue slanting public perception of the situation to fit the U.S.-backed NATO agenda that amounts to aggression against Russia.

What do They Know? CFR Just Deemed Russia-NATO as Top “Conflict” Risk of 2017

A “serious military confrontation” between Russia and NATO nations ranks at the top of the Council on Foreign Relations list of conflict risks for 2017 — and judging by the new McCarthyite, Red Scare hysteria gripping the nation, it seems the United States is hell bent on making that a reality.

For its ninth annual Preventive Priorities Survey, CFR’s Center for Preventive Action (CPA) “asked foreign policy experts to rank conflicts based on their likelihood of occurring or escalating and their potential impact on U.S. national interests.”

A military conflict between Russia and a NATO member nation would stem “from assertive Russian behavior in Eastern Europe,” according to the survey.

Other “top tier” risks with a “high” impact and moderate likelihood of occurring include a nuclear crisis with North Korea; a cyberattack on critical U.S. infrastructure; and a “mass casualty terrorist attack,” either in the United States or another NATO ally nation.

Additionally, three conflicts with a “high” likelihood which would have a “moderate” impact include “increased violence and instability in Afghanistan resulting from a continued strengthening of the Taliban insurgency and potential government collapse; the intensification of violence between Turkey and various Kurdish armed groups within Turkey and in neighboring countries; and the intensification of the civil war in Syria resulting from increased external support for warring parties, including military intervention by outside powers.”

CFR analysts did not deem any conflict both highly likely and highly impactful to U.S. interests, “a change from last year when an intensification of Syria’s civil war was considered the most urgent threat. Respondents still considered a worsening of Syria’s civil war to be highly likely in 2017, but downgraded its impact on U.S. interests from high to moderate.”

Analysts did, however, view President-Elect Donald Trump as a substantial wild card, as Paul B. Stares, CPA director and General John W. Vessey senior fellow for conflict prevention, explained:

“With a new presidential administration assuming office, it is important to help policymakers anticipate and avert potential crises that could arise and threaten U.S. interests. Our annual survey aims to highlight the most likely sources of instability and conflict around the world so that the government can prioritize its efforts appropriately.”

What the survey unsurprisingly fails to mention is the role the United States and NATO have actively played in a potential military conflict with Russia.

As recently as late June, Russian aggression remained a subject of debate — even within NATO. General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, explained rather bluntly,

“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.”

But a number of Balkan states, paranoid about the possibility Russia would invade as it had in Crimea, requested support in the form of military protection from NATO — and the subsequent buildup of alliance forces along Russia’s border has been viewed by many as the true aggression in this scenario.

First deploying between 3,000 and 4,000 troops, Pavel initially claimed troop buildup would remain limited in scope due to the lack of substantive threat from Russia — but numbers quickly ballooned to at least 40,000, and it’s unclear at this point precisely how many NATO troops are stationed along the Russian border.

Further, on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, NATO put 300,000 troops on high alert over fears of Russian hackers. Since then, anti-Russian hysteria has gripped the American political establishment, and though no unassailable proof has yet surfaced, the CIA, various politicians, and mainstream outlets claim Russia did, indeed, interfere in the election.

That claim, though plastered in a constant string of headlines, has been disputed by the FBI and, more recently, a Wikileaks insider. Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and known ally of Julian Assange, told the Daily Mail on Tuesday,

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians. The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.”

Murray also penned in a blog post:

“I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

“A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they ‘know the individuals’ involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of ‘We know who it was, it was the Russians’ are beneath contempt.”

What, exactly, is the ultimate goal with this Red Scare, McCarthyite scaremongering isn’t yet clear, but the tactic has certainly furthered the cleft between the U.S. and Russia — making CFR’s conflict assessment of the situation all the more believable.

Whether the incoming Trump administration will heed the warning — and end the unnecessary, absurdly dangerous provocation — is still an open question.