Putin's adviser invents new excuse: Ukraine allegedly planned invasion of Russia on March 8

In an interview with Russian propaganda outlet TASS, Anton Kobyakov, an adviser to Vladimir Putin and executive secretary of the Eastern Economic Forum's organizing committee, presented a new version of events explaining the start of the war, according to The Moscow Times.

Kobyakov claimed that Russian troops, early in the full-scale invasion, found documents in an abandoned headquarters of a Ukrainian territorial defense brigade allegedly showing that Kyiv was planning to attack Russia on March 8, 2022. He said Russia pre-empted this supposed attack by two weeks, launching its full-scale invasion on February 24.

According to the adviser, Ukraine allegedly wanted to present the war as a "gift" for International Women's Day on March 8, and Russia struck first thanks to what he called the "foresight" of Russian leadership. Kobyakov also invoked World War II, citing Putin's earlier statement that June 22, 1941 — the day Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union — would never be repeated in history.

The adviser repeated an earlier claim that the West, while pretending to support the Minsk agreements, was actually preparing Ukraine for war and sought to arm it in order to push for a forceful resolution of what Russia calls the "conflict in Donbas."

Background

Russia occupied Crimea and part of Donbas back in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, striking peaceful populated areas overnight with missiles and bombs. In the war's early days, Russian propagandists promised to take Kyiv within three days, but as of late summer 2026 Russian forces have still not managed to reach the full administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Throughout the war, Russian authorities have offered various justifications for its start — claiming NATO planned to attack Russia, inventing supposed "biolabs" in Ukraine, and even stories about "combat mosquitoes." In 2023, Russia introduced a rewritten history textbook containing false claims about the war.