How the US warned Zelensky and European countries about the invasion but few listened

US knowledge of Russia’s plans came primarily from two sources: satellite imagery and information from sources close to the Kremlin. The satellite images came from open-source providers such as Maxar Technologies. This allowed media outlets to report in November 2021 that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers had gathered near the Ukrainian border.

Intelligence work targeting Russia was conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). They managed to obtain information from the Russian General Staff’s operations directorate, which was responsible for drafting and refining war plans.

Putin made great efforts to ensure that only a handful of people in Russia knew about the invasion plans until a couple of weeks before February 24, 2022.

When did Putin decide to invade? CIA sources suggest it likely happened sometime in early 2020.

During the first months of COVID-19, Putin isolated himself and read extensively about Russian history. He likely began reflecting on the history of Russia and Ukraine and his own role in it. This is supported by the fact that since then he has rarely missed an opportunity to speak about figures such as Rurik, the Primary Chronicle of Kyiv, and Yaroslav the Wise. Putin displayed the same pattern in his widely discussed interview with Tucker Carlson, the only interview he has given to a Western journalist since the war began.

The year 2020 also offered favorable conditions, both through Putin’s own actions and through external developments. Putin amended the Russian Constitution so he could remain in power indefinitely. In neighboring Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko was weakened by a strong protest movement, increasing the country’s dependence on the Kremlin. Putin saw an opportunity to use Belarus as a staging ground for a future attack on Ukraine.

In spring 2021, Russia began amassing large troop formations near Ukraine’s border and on the Crimean Peninsula, which it had occupied since 2014, officially for exercises. At the same time, US intelligence received information suggesting that Putin would announce war plans against Ukraine in a speech scheduled for April 21.

President Joe Biden became deeply concerned and called Putin a week before the speech. He urged his Russian counterpart to ease tensions and proposed a summit in Geneva in June.

It seemed to work. Putin delivered his speech without excessive war rhetoric, and the next day it was announced that the military exercise was over. By the time the summit with Biden took place, Ukraine was not a central topic of discussion.

The danger was not over. In July, Putin published an article filled with lengthy and largely inaccurate historical arguments about why Ukraine and Russia belong together.

In the fall, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers once again gathered near Ukraine’s border. In Washington, officials became increasingly convinced that Russia was not merely planning a limited invasion. Putin aimed to seize Kyiv.

Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to Moscow to assess Putin’s intentions. The Russian president was at his summer residence by the Black Sea, and the conversation took place by phone. When the meeting ended, Burns was even more concerned that war was near.

“Biden often asked yes-or-no questions. When I returned, he asked whether I thought Putin would do it. I said yes,” Burns later recalled.

In the fall and winter of 2021, two camps emerged in the West.

While the US and the UK warned of war, intelligence services in France, Germany, and Poland downplayed the threat.

The CIA and MI6 did everything they could to persuade their allies to take the invasion threat seriously. They declassified significant amounts of intelligence and shared it with European counterparts. They also leaked some information to media outlets such as The New York Times.

Yet European leaders struggled to believe the reports for two reasons. First, memories lingered of American and British falsehoods before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Second, they viewed Putin as a rational actor. Surely he did not believe Russia could take Kyiv with just a few tens of thousands of troops?

“We had the same information about troops at the border, but we differed in our assessment of what was going on in Putin’s head,” said Étienne de Poncins, France’s ambassador to Kyiv at the time.

That is why both Emmanuel Macron and then–German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Moscow and, across Putin’s famously long table, tried to persuade the Russian president not to invade Ukraine.

“I have received assurances that he will not escalate tensions,” Macron said after meeting Putin on February 7, 2022. Two weeks later, Russia launched its invasion.

German complacency was embodied by Bruno Kahl, then head of the BND intelligence service. Kahl traveled to Kyiv for meetings the day before the invasion. By then, several Western intelligence services had concluded that war was only days or even hours away. Several countries, including some in Europe, had already withdrawn most of their personnel from Ukraine weeks earlier.

When Kahl arrived at his hotel in Kyiv, he was ordered to leave the country immediately. He insisted that his meetings the next day were too important to cancel and ultimately had to be evacuated from Ukraine with the help of Polish intelligence the following day.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky may not have shown the same degree of denial, but his stance may have had more serious consequences. In the divide between the English-speaking intelligence services and their European counterparts, Zelensky aligned more closely with the European assessment.

For months, he dismissed the war warnings; his wife, Olena, did not even have a suitcase packed when explosions began to be heard in Kyiv four years ago.

Zelensky’s actions stood in stark contrast to those of then–Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Zaluzhnyi pleaded with Zelensky to impose martial law to allow troop movements and prepare for various scenarios.

“You’re going to fight Mike Tyson, and the only thing you’ve done before is pillow-fight with your little brother,” Zaluzhnyi reportedly said.

Experts give two explanations for Zelensky’s reluctance to fully accept the threat.

First, he was influenced by assurances from Germany and France that Putin was merely playing a diplomatic game. Second, he feared that Ukraine’s economy would collapse if the public were told that Russia was preparing to invade.

It is an assessment that, no matter how wrong it may have been, may have saved Ukraine, according to a general in Ukraine’s military intelligence service, HUR.

“If he had started talking about an imminent war and urged people to prepare, the whole society would have panicked and millions would have fled. The country would probably have fallen.”