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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week repeated his false claim that Ukraine was carrying out a “genocide” against Russian speakers in the country’s east, while the Russian authorities announced an investigation into supposed “mass graves” of Russian-speaking victims of Ukrainian forces.

And on Thursday, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, offered an ominous assessment. “The excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” he said.

Mr. Blinken told the Security Council that Moscow appeared to be setting the stage.

“Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” he said, citing a “so-called terrorist bombing” or “a fake, even a real attack” with chemical weapons. “This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine,” he said, “or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government.”

If so, it would not be the first time.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it did so after claiming that Russian speakers there were threatened by the pro-Western revolution in Kyiv, which the Kremlin described as a fascist coup. And in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia after the Georgian Army moved into a Russian-backed separatist enclave there.

The skirmishing in Eastern Europe between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed separatists is longstanding, but Thursday’s violence was the worst since a cease-fire was reached two years ago.

The combatants exchanged not just shells but accusations. The Ukrainian military said three adult civilians had been wounded at the kindergarten, and on the other side, a Russian-backed separatist leader claimed Ukraine had launched mortar fire “barbarically and cynically.”