nations. putin s visit to chai in comes as russia continues to board up either forces along ukraine. and one day after the u.s. accused russia of planning to release a video of a fake attack by ukraine, complete with actors to use as an excuse to justify invasion. and we asked why the u.s. decided to release this information. we are not saying that this is what they are going to do. we are saying that this is an option under consideration and that they have used these sorts of pretexts in the past to justify military action and we think that this will make it much more difficult for them after the fact to claim that they had to whatever they decide to do. also new details about the u.s. raid in syria. a defense official says that the u.s. is examining electronic devices that special operations forces gathered during the raid yesterday. the devices are believed to
both of these leaders. ivan watson in hong kong. thanks, ivan. to russia where the kremlin is denying a pentagon claim that russia plans to stage a fake attack to create a pretexts for invasion. as part of this fake attack, we believe that russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations as well as military equipment at the hands of ukraine or the west. cnn s nic robertson is live in moscow. how confident is the u.s. in making that type of serious claim and what is the kremlin saying? i see the russian foreign minister spoke out just a short time ago. reporter: yeah. russian foreign minister sergei lavrov called it dedelusional. they say it didn t make logical sense. all of these claims that we ve
the kremlin denies the claim. u.s. deputy national security adviser john finer sharing more new details right here on msnbc. we don t know definitively this is the route they re going to take, but we know it s an operation under consideration that would involve actors playing mourners for people who are killed in an event, that they would have created themselves, that would involve the deployment of corpses to represent bodies purr important purportedly killed. they have used these pretexts in the past. we think putting this out will make it more difficult for them with the claim they had to do whatever they decided to do. and vladimir putin arriving in beijing for a display of unity with chinese president xi jinping ahead of the official opening of the winter olympics of the chinese capital. here at home, there s new footage of u.s. troops packing up in ft. bragg, north carolina, ahead of boarding flights to
ukrainian government and have in essence an internal coup. these false flag operations are pretexts for putin to try to create a set of circumstances that somehow justifies his action instead of seeing it for what it is. the malign actions of someone who want to change the map of europe by force and that s what we cannot have. nothing we are going to do, whether it with on the mother of all sanctions, sending troops to bolster our nato allies in the region, that s not going to be provoking putin. putin will make a decision based on what he wants to accomplish and either he will find a pathway off conflict and towards maybe some of the security concerns that he wants and potential guarantees to a diplomatic process or he will ultimately have a devastating economy as a result of his
reporter: this is where the ukrainian military says that one of the artillery shells hit. you can see this is a room where children would be playing. fortunately, there was no one in this room at the time. but according to local authorities, three people who worked here reporter: the concern is that russia would use instability in that region, trading of artillery fire and so on, as a pretext to say things are getting unstable. we have to send our russian forces in to stabilize the situation. jake, as you heard secretary antony blinken at the u.n. today, that just one in a long menu of pretexts that the u.s. is concern russia might use or deploy to justify an invasion. jim sciutto, thank you so much. appreciate it. today the russian government formally responded to proposals from the biden administration on ways to keep peace in the region. a u.s. letter sent three weeks ago raised concerns about russia s military buildup and