Fox News guest Rebekah Koffler claimed during an interview with host Eric Shawn on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin worked with Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to stage the recent armed coup as a “classic false flag.”

Over the last 24 hours, chaos has upended the military and political establishment in Russia after Prigozhin marched his paramilitary group from Ukraine into Russia, taking over two cities and marching his men toward Moscow. In a sudden turn of events, however, Prigozhin reportedly called off the armed coup after negotiations with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

The rebellion represented the largest existential threat to Putin’s regime since he took control of Russia over twenty years ago.

Koffler, an intelligence analyst, claimed during a long-winded nine-minute rant on Fox News that Putin orchestrated the coup to boost his political power in the Russia.

“My intelligence analysis suggests, Eric, that this is a classic false flag operation that’s been orchestrated by Putin and Prigozhin,” Koffler told the cable news host. “Prigozhin is not a stupid man. He’s a highly intelligent formerly convict. He turned his life around from a prisoner to a hot dog stands owner to the owner of a multi-million catering business that served the Kremlin, including Putin himself.”

Koffler notes that the Wagner group 50,000 men in Ukraine while Putin’s National Guard, created in 2016 to put down social unrest, has 340,000 men enlisted into the group and the Wagner forces were being tracked every minute” by the Russian security service.

“So again, what has changed from this in the last few hours? All of a sudden he decided to turn his troops around and made this deal? No, this is all staged,” she added. The analyst then appeared to claim that Putin used the rebellion to boost the mobilizations of recruits for the military.

“Putin wants us to believe that he’s weak, that there’s an ongoing threat of a military insurrection,” Koffler claims. “So this is a pretext to declare martial law, which Putin has already done. He made an amendment today that anybody who is violating the martial law is going to be imprisoned for 30 days. Another very interesting and revealing point is that Putin just authorized that men with a criminal record can join the military.”

“So this is a justification for extra mobilization of the Russian forces to send them to the meat grinder in Ukraine. It is also to demonstrate to President Biden that, no, Russia is not a threat. Russia is actually, you know, involved in its own domestic turmoil. But this is all a classic distraction and classic Putin,” she said.

“What you’re describing is like three dimensional chess. That’s a type of thinking that is just beyond,” Shawn said in response to Koffler.

Near the end of her interview, Koffler predicted that Putin will remain in power and potentially used the coup to get rid of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“In the meantime, Putin is going to gain momentum, mobilize additional personnel, and re-energize his offensive on Ukraine,” she concluded.

Watch above via Fox News.

The post ‘Classic False Flag’: Analyst on Fox News Says Putin ‘Orchestrated’ Wagner Coup to Make Biden Think Russia’s No Threat first appeared on Mediaite.

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