You have probably read it, but if not, you might like to read "Manufacturing Consent", which discusses much the same behaviour in various previous western wars. The whole Iraq thing played out just like Chomsky and Herman wrote: leadership wanted a war and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

If you follow the ISW Ukraine updates¹ then you will see them calling this "setting conditions" when Russia does it.

¹ https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-confli...

ETA: no idea why we're discussing this on a thread about Google timers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯