Putin adviser claims Ukraine planned to invade Russia on 8 March 2022, so Russia attacked first
An adviser to Russian ruler Vladimir Putin has come up with yet another justification for Russia's war, claiming that Ukraine had planned to invade Russia on 8 March 2022, prompting Moscow to pre-empt it by attacking first.
Source: The Moscow Times, citing an interview with Anton Kobyakov, Putin's adviser and executive secretary of the Eastern Economic Forum organising committee, given to TASS, a Kremlin-aligned Russian news outlet
Details: The Russian official claimed that at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops discovered documents at an abandoned headquarters of one of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' Territorial Defence brigades indicating that Kyiv was preparing to attack Russia on 8 March 2022.
"We beat them to it by two weeks," Kobyakov said, referring to Russia's invasion of peaceful Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Putin's adviser claimed that Kyiv had wanted to "present the war as a gift" for International Women's Day and that Russia had attacked first "thanks to the foresight of the Russian leadership".
As usual, the Russian official also mentioned World War II while making these bizarre claims.
"As the president [Russian ruler Putin – ed.] said earlier, there will never again be a 22 June in our history [22 June 1941 was the day Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union – ed.]," Kobyakov added.
He also reiterated previous accusations that the West had "disguised itself as a supporter of the Minsk agreements" while actually "preparing Ukraine for war".
According to Kobyakov's version of events, the West supposedly intended to arm Kyiv and push it towards a military solution to the "conflict in Donbas" [as Russia describes its occupation of Ukrainian territories – ed.].
Why this matters: Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and parts of Donbas as early as 2014.
In 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, attacking peaceful cities and towns across the country with missiles and bombs during the night.
Notably, in the early days of the full-scale invasion, Russian propagandists actively circulated claims that "Russia would take Kyiv in three days", while Russian soldiers advancing on the capital carried parade uniforms with them, intending to march down Khreshchatyk, the main street of Kyiv, after those supposed "three days".
However, as of late summer 2026, Russian forces have still failed even to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Throughout this period, the Russian authorities have invented various justifications for starting the war, claiming, among other things, that NATO intended to attack Russia and alleging the existence of "biolaboratories" in Ukraine. Their claims have even extended to absurd stories about "combat mosquitoes" and a "dirty bomb".
In 2023, Russia unveiled a rewritten history textbook containing false claims about the war in Ukraine.
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