Bloomberg News, widely (though arguably wrongly) regarded as among the most “reputable” US-led Western Mainstream Media outlets, published fake news on Friday falsely reporting that “Russia Invades Ukraine”. The self-proclaimed “error” was later taken down and the company later released a statement saying that it “regrets” what happened. Nevertheless, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned this incident as dangerous despite agreeing that it wasn’t a deliberate provocation. He even quipped that the Kremlin might use the term “Bloomberg News” instead of fake news going forward though it remains to be seen whether this was said in gest or in seriousness.

This supposedly “reputable” US-led Western Mainstream Media’s fake news incident was definitely dangerous, though. During artificially manufactured geopolitical tensions such as those that have currently been triggered by the undeclared US–provoked missile crisis in Europe, such self-proclaimed “errors” can have devastating consequences for ordinary people who might interpret false headlines like Bloomberg’s as the truth. Older folks and those with preexisting conditions might suffer medical emergencies while ultra-nationalist thugs might start going on rampages or worse. Irreversible damage can therefore be wrought by false reports in such extremely tense circumstances.

No matter what Bloomberg claims, this certainly doesn’t seem like an accident. Their statement said that “We prepare headlines for many scenarios and the headline ‘Russian Invades Ukraine’ was inadvertently published” but it clearly didn’t happen on its own automatically. Somebody was responsible for that and it’s inexplicable why it took nearly half an hour to correct this self-proclaimed “error”. Even more suspicious is that it happened on the day of the Beijing Winter Olympics’ Opening Ceremony that many observers already predicted the US-led Western Mainstream Media would try to spoil out of spite.

One can only imagine the US-led Western reaction if RT ended up making such a self-proclaimed “error” alleging for instance that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally abdicated after having already fled the capital out of fear of his own peacefully protesting people and arguably losing legitimacy according to the same standards that the US-led West applies towards Global South leaders. Even though he’s unlikely to do what many would consider to be the right thing, that scenario is still much more probable than “Russia Invades Ukraine”. Had RT made that self-proclaimed “error”, though, there’d be angry calls to have it deplatformed from social media and its Russian state patron sanctioned.

There’s no telling when the next US-led Western Mainstream Media anti-Russian fake news provocation will occur but Bloomberg’s assuredly won’t be the last. Tensions with Moscow are at an all-time high after what Washington’s done over the past few months. Everyone’s on edge and US intelligence agencies are probably probing reactions to this latest fake news stunt among certain audiences in preparation of yet another provocation sometime in the coming future. The international community must therefore remain on high alert since the next example of this happening might be something even more ridiculous such as “Russia Nukes Ukraine” or whatever else the US-led West is fantasizing about.