Did a report by the RAND Corp., a U.S think tank, explain the real reason behind Russian-Ukrainian conflict? No, that's not true: Russian historian Andery Fursov referred to a document that was proven to be fabricated.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published by the Russian TikTok account natalyanystad on June 2, 2023, with a caption reading (translated into English by Lead Stories staff):
Andrey Fursov. That's why Ukraine! The USA is saving its economy.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Jun 22 05:19:15 2023 UTC)
Fursov claimed during his interview (at the 23:49 mark) on the "V Teme" program on Belta, the Belarusian state news channel, that the reason for clashes between the West and Russia over Ukraine had been addressed in a RAND Corp. document titled "Strengthening the U.S, weakening Germany."
The alleged RAND document described a detailed plan on dividing Europe by staging a war in Ukraine to cause an energy crisis "and destroy the European economy by placing useful idiots in political positions in order to stop Russian energy supplies from reaching the continent" to weaken Germany. This is seen as a way of solving U.S.'s own economical problems, according to the false document.
RAND Corp. called the report "a bizarre U.S. conspiracy theory" on September 14, 2022, and said it was fake.
RAND Corp. Director of Media Relations Jeffrey Hiday emailed Lead Stories on September 17, 2022, for a previous article, confirming that the report was fake.
