Editor's note: Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

The U.S.-led West's apocalyptic prediction of a so-called "imminent Russian invasion" on February 16 appears increasingly unlikely to occur following the Russian Ministry of Defense's announcement on February 15 that its Union Resolve drills with ally Belarus are drawing down and some troops are presently returning to their barracks. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook that "February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day of failure of Western propaganda war."

She had earlier accused the U.S. and the UK of engaging in an illegal propaganda war fearmongering about her country's alleged "invasion" intentions. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an ironic comment about the reported "invasion date" while his National Security and Defense Council Secretary Alexey Danilov declared that "we don't see a full-blown Russian offensive taking place on the 16th or the 17th." While anything can still happen, it's certainly beginning to look like the U.S.-led West's war hype was just a hoax.

Fake news has very real consequences, however, as proven by food prices reportedly spiking in Ukraine as a result of Washington's information warfare campaign. Multibillionaire representatives of its big business community, regarded as "oligarchs" by some, also reportedly fled while some Western countries evacuated most of their diplomatic staff and all their military forces in the country. They also called on their citizens to leave Ukraine. Some airlines even canceled many flights due to fears of war.

These counterproductive consequences for a close U.S.-led Western partner raise very serious questions about why this information warfare campaign hyping up the threat of war with Russia was initiated in the first place. Russia has the right to stage military exercises within its territory and none of its officials ever threatened Ukraine. All that Moscow did in late December was publicize its security guarantee requests that the U.S.-led West has hitherto insufficiently responded to according to the Kremlin.

Russia essentially wants to revise the European security architecture because the U.S. gradually changed the rules of the game after the Cold War. Its continued expansion of NATO, violation of the Russia-NATO Founding Act of 1997 by spreading military infrastructure into the former Warsaw Pact countries, and Russian intelligence's suspicions that the U.S. plans to deploy strike weapons near their country's borders – perhaps even hypersonic ones and even in Ukraine – threatened to cross Russia's red lines.

Despite a lack of visible success in negotiating with the U.S. and the NATO alliance that Washington controls, Russian President Vladimir Putin is still committed to continuing diplomacy following a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at the Kremlin on Monday. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov subsequently confirmed that "President Putin is willing to negotiate" on his country's security guarantee requests.

The latest series of events strongly suggests that no so-called "Russian invasion of Ukraine" will occur on Wednesday like the U.S. predicted. What seems to have happened is that the West psyched itself out over Ukraine, getting itself caught up in a tizzy over false intelligence like in the run-up to the Iraq War while self-proclaimed "experts" fueled the flames by sharing their most rabid political fantasies with the public. The Western mainstream media eagerly went along with this war hype for ratings.

The economic and financial consequences of this information warfare campaign have already been disastrous for Ukraine but the reputational ones are much worse for the U.S. itself. Not only will few ever take its intelligence claims seriously again, let alone about Russia, but the panicked evacuation of all U.S.-led Western military forces and most of their diplomats from Ukraine shows that they can't be relied upon as true "allies." This isn't surprising though after what happened in Afghanistan last August.

Provided that no (potentially mercenary-driven) provocation occurs in eastern Ukraine in the coming days to provoke a resolute Russian response, observers can objectively conclude that the U.S.-led West's information warfare campaign didn't just target Moscow and even their "ally" Kyiv, but also the Western public themselves who were manipulated into fretting about "World War III." This is yet another high-profile example of the Western elite lying to the masses for self-interested ulterior motives.

What makes all of this even worse is that the U.S.-led West might not learn its lesson if their people don't rise up and make their leaders aware of how unacceptable these warmongering lies were. The failure to hold officials, "experts," and the media accountable might embolden them to replicate this information warfare campaign elsewhere across the world. If that happens, then the world should already realize that the U.S. is lying again and shouldn't trust it one bit.

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