Which intelligence service had the best information from Belarus in February 2022 and who told Budanov that the main Russian strike would be on Hostomel. A major publication has appeared

Ukrainian serviceman in Avdiivka, Donetsk region, March 17, 2023. Photo: AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka, File

As the authors of the article recall, American and British intelligence agencies were already confident in the autumn of 2021 that Putin had decided to seize Ukraine. The article indicates that the Americans' information was not trusted in Europe, as the situation of 2003 remained in memory, when George Bush's administration falsified intelligence data to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The article is full of interesting and little-known details: how a Polish intelligence resident smashed encryption equipment with a hammer in the Polish embassy in Kyiv on February 23; how the head of German intelligence was evacuated by Polish special services; and how Putin triumphed at dinner on February 24.

Before the war, the Ukrainian authorities faced a difficult dilemma: if they told the people that war was inevitable, or even simply carried out mobilization measures, panic and chaos would ensue, causing the country to explode from within; if they denied everything and did not prepare, the state might not withstand the first blow.

Zelensky chose a middle path between these extremes, which ultimately saved Ukraine.

Joe Biden, whose declining intellectual abilities at the end of his presidential term cast a shadow over his achievements, emerges from the published materials as a leader who possessed keen political intuition and quickly made difficult decisions, but based on the mistaken assessment of American intelligence that Ukraine would not stand, and incorrectly assessed the balance of forces.

In Paris and Berlin, intelligence services interpreted Russia's military buildup not as a war plan, but as a bluff aimed at pressuring Ukraine.

"We had all the same information about the troops on the border, but we differed in our analysis of what was in Putin's head," the publication quotes then-French ambassador to Kyiv Étienne de Poncins as saying.

Even Poland, traditionally resolute concerning Russia, was not convinced by American information that the invasion would be full-scale.

"We assumed that the Foreign Intelligence Service and the GRU would convey to Putin that Ukrainians would not greet Russians with flowers and bread-and-salt," Polish Foreign Intelligence Service head Piotr Krawczyk told journalists.

The publication notes that Polish special services had a good understanding of the situation in neighboring Belarus, where forces that could move on Kyiv from the north were deployed, and those forces seemed extremely weak.

"They were mostly conscripts... and they had little ammunition, fuel, and training," Krawczyk said.

In his opinion, this more resembled a diversionary maneuver — an attempt to force Ukraine to divert attention and firepower from Donbas — rather than a serious force capable of holding most of the country under occupation.

Six weeks before the invasion

In the first half of January, the Americans received more detailed information about the plans: Russian troops would invade Ukraine from several directions, including from Belarus, a landing force would land at Hostomel airport near Kyiv, which would become a base for seizing the capital, and there was a plan to assassinate Zelensky. Russia also developed a post-occupation action plan: lists of Ukrainians to be eliminated or imprisoned, and pro-Russian figures who would be tasked with governing Ukraine, were compiled.

CIA Director William Burns flew to Kyiv to personally inform the Ukrainian president about what, in the CIA's opinion, was about to happen, but the reaction was not what he might have hoped for. A week later, Zelensky released a video address to Ukrainians, urging them not to listen to those who predicted conflict.

Three days after the video address, on January 22, the UK Foreign Office issued a statement claiming that London possessed intelligence that Russia wanted to install former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev as prime minister after the invasion. To many, this seemed absurd to the point of impossibility: some Murayev was a nobody.

Two weeks before the invasion

In mid-February, British, American, and some other embassies evacuated from Kyiv, having first destroyed secret equipment.

The CIA residency moved to a secret base in western Ukraine. As a farewell, they gifted several "Javelins" to the SBU.

In London, key Ministry of Defense employees relocated to hotels near the ministry building to be at work within minutes when the moment of truth arrived.

Some European countries also reduced their presence in Kyiv to a minimal staff and developed evacuation plans. But French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz still believed that Putin could be dissuaded from attacking, and both visited Moscow in February to convince him to resolve the situation diplomatically.

The Americans continued to interpret Moscow's signals quite differently. During Biden's last phone conversation with Putin on February 12, Biden found the Russian leader to be resolute, determined, and completely uninterested in negotiation proposals. Hanging up, Biden told his aides that it was time to prepare for the worst. War was inevitable, and the invasion could happen any day.

Павялічыць

Volunteers and veterans of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces train in an abandoned center on the outskirts of Kyiv. February 5, 2022. Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez / The Washington Post via Getty Images

In conversations with Zelensky, the US president openly stated that the Russians would advance on Kyiv. Disappointed by what seemed to him to be "the inability of the Ukrainian president and his team to listen," US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan focused on Ukrainian special services and military personnel, hoping they would act from below.

A group of GUR officers — Ukraine's military intelligence — indeed began quiet emergency planning in January 2022. Under the guise of month-long exercises, they rented several safe houses around Kyiv and withdrew large reserves of cash. After a month, in mid-February, the war had not yet begun, so the "exercises" were extended for another month.

In mid-January, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi, along with his wife, left their apartment for security reasons and moved into official premises within the General Staff complex.

In February, as one general recalled, staff exercises were conducted for the high command — various scenarios of a possible invasion were practiced. These included an attack on Kyiv and even a worse option than what actually materialized: if Russian troops broke through a corridor along Ukraine's western border to cut off aid supplies from allies.

However, without the sanction of the political leadership, all these plans remained only on paper. Any large-scale troop redeployment would have been illegal and almost impossible to keep secret.

In the second week of February, Ukraine's border service intercepted new, crucial evidence: negotiations between the commander of a Chechen unit stationed in Belarus and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. The commander reported to Kadyrov that his men were in place and "would soon be in Kyiv." Zelensky was shown the recording, but he stuck to his opinion.

Two days before the invasion

On February 22, Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov handed Zelensky a red folder with a top-secret intelligence report about a "direct physical threat" to the president. In other words, assassin groups were already en route. Zelensky seemed to brush it off, but the information apparently made an impression.

The next day, the day before the war began, during a tense and somber meeting with the presidents of Poland and Lithuania in Kyiv's majestic Mariinsky Palace, Zelensky told them that they might be seeing him alive for the last time. As soon as the meeting concluded, Polish intelligence officers rushed to usher the two presidents into a motorcade that sped westward at maximum speed.

Bartosz Cichocki, the Polish ambassador to Ukraine, remained in Kyiv. A couple of hours later, he was summoned to the embassy, where a "top secret" telegram arrived from Warsaw. It was a short, one-paragraph text informing the ambassador that the invasion would begin tonight.

Павялічыць

Archival photo: Facebook Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

As The Guardian notes, in the last two weeks before the war, the Poles revised their skepticism about the invasion, partly based on new intelligence about Russian troops stationed in Belarus. There was now final confirmation that the attack would take place.

After receiving the telegram, the publication claims, "the embassy building's walls shook for several hours" as one of the Polish intelligence officers who remained in Kyiv smashed encryption equipment with a sledgehammer to prevent it from falling into Russian hands.

Eight hours before the invasion

Warsaw was now on the same side as London and Washington, while Paris and Berlin remained in doubt even in the final minutes. The intelligence agencies of these largest EU states now recognized that some military actions were possible, but they still rejected the idea of a full-scale invasion aimed at seizing Kyiv. The French ambassador learned about it only when he was awakened by the sound of Russian missiles hitting targets around the capital.

Even more telling is the story of Bruno Kahl – the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND). Late in the evening of February 23, his plane landed in Kyiv. Panic conversations about a possible attack were already circulating in the city, foreign journalists were warned about the danger, but Kahl still arrived in the capital.

Shortly after he checked into a Kyiv hotel, the German ambassador to Ukraine received an urgent order from Berlin to immediately evacuate all remaining diplomatic personnel from Kyiv by road. The threat was too immediate to wait until morning, the ministry stated.

Even then, the head of German intelligence declined the offer to join the nighttime diplomatic convoy, citing important meetings scheduled for the next day. Instead of meetings the next day, Kahl had to be evacuated from Kyiv on roads jammed with Ukrainian refugees. Fortunately, Polish special services came to the rescue.

According to Zelensky's wife — it's hard to say if she should be fully believed — she and her husband went to bed as usual on the eve of the attack. She didn't even pack an emergency bag.

The invasion also caught most of the Ukrainian cabinet of ministers by surprise, including Defense Minister Reznikov. He went to bed with an alarm set for 6 AM: he planned to fly by military plane to the contact line in Donbas to hold a conversation with the Baltic ministers from there.

Instead, the minister was woken at 4 AM by a call from the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi: War.

Putin announced the start of a "special military operation" at 4:50 AM Kyiv time on February 24. Minutes later, Russia launched a series of missile strikes on targets around the capital.

For European intelligence services, which failed to foresee the invasion in time, a period of painful self-analysis ensued. One European intelligence officer admitted that there was strong indignation within the agency over the failure, and many insisted on an internal investigation — to understand what went wrong and what could have been done better.

"The entire purpose of an intelligence service is to foresee when the next war will begin," he said. "And we completely failed this task."

They could only console themselves with the fact that Moscow and Minsk made even bigger mistakes. The article tells how, at a dinner with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Kremlin on February 24, Vladimir Putin waved his hand: don't worry, everything will be over in a couple of weeks. The war has now entered its fifth year, Russia has lost over 350,000 troops killed, and its reputational losses are inestimable.

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