The White House backtracks, says ‘imminent’ is the wrong word to describe the Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine that the US has been alleging.
The US government is no longer using the word ‘imminent’ in its narrative around the alleged Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters, on Wednesday, explaining that it was sending an unintended message.
“I used it once. I think others have used that once, and we stopped using it because I think it sent a message that we weren’t intending to send, which was that we knew that President Putin had made a decision,” Psaki said at a press briefing.
“I would say the vast majority of times I’ve talked about it, I’ve said he could invade ‘at any time,’” she added.
❗️Russian invasion of Ukraine no longer “imminent”, says the White House, which had promised a Russian invasion every day for near enough two months
For a government that missed the Taliban offensive, foretelling a Russian invasion wasn’t going to be easy pic.twitter.com/TjAerpVu7m
— Murad Gazdiev (@MuradGazdiev) February 2, 2022
Psaki’s remarks come after the US envoy to the UN backtracked from the use of ‘imminent’ in an interview with NPR aired on Tuesday.
“No, I would not say that we are arguing that it’s imminent,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the broadcaster.
The official transcript of Psaki’s January 25 briefing says otherwise, however. Asked whether the Russian invasion of Ukraine – which the US media and intelligence agencies have claimed since late October would happen any day now – was still “imminent,” here’s what Psaki had to say.
“When we said it was imminent, it remains imminent,” she told one reporter.
“Well, ‘imminent’ has a pretty intense meaning. Doesn’t it?” she said in answer to the very next question.
“And it’s still the belief that it’s imminent?” was the followup, to which Psaki replied, “Correct.”
It wasn’t just in Ukraine, but mainstream US media a week ago issued a flood of fearmongering headlines suggesting WW3 with Russia was on the horizon. Based on the fake news coming from the White House of an “imminent” Russian invasion, the American public began bracing for yet another major foreign conflict which the beltway establishment seemed itching to get involved in.
But now it’s being exposed increasingly as a classic “wag the dog” scenario.
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Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson was the only major prime time network pundit to expose the “imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine as fake news in real time…