The shelling of Mainila in November 1939 was used as a pretext by the Soviet Union to start a war against Finland and is often presented in military history as a classic case of a false-flag operation. This article examines this incident in the context of Soviet propaganda, post-Soviet history politics, and contemporary Russian war propaganda and rhetoric. It argues that the same strategies – blaming others for provocation, “accusation in a mirror”, and systematically emphasizing one’s innocence –applied by Soviet newspapers to their reportage of this “provocation” are applied by Russian propagandists in the contemporary domestic and international media environment.