“People, dig ditches”! Major insider report: America knew Putin’s plans in detail for months, Zelensky’s reaction shocked them
The “Washington Post” says that Biden administration officials have known for months that Vladimir Putin is amassing tens of thousands of troops and moving tanks to the Ukrainian border.
The newspaper detailed the sequence of events that transpired behind closed doors before to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, convened an emergency conference in the Oval Office after he grew certain that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine based on accumulating intelligence.
Joe Biden was informed at the time that intelligence on Putin’s operational plans indicated that everything was in place for a massive attack on Ukraine, and the Washington Post reported that the US intelligence community had sources within the Russian political leadership, intelligence community, and military.
According to the newspaper, Biden was then informed that Putin’s objectives involve seizing the majority of Ukrainian territory.
The report, with previously undisclosed details, sheds new light on the US struggle to restore credibility, a balancing act between the secrecy surrounding intelligence and the need to reassure allies of its veracity, as well as the difficulty of determining how the world’s most powerful military alliance will assist in Ukraine, without NATO firing a single shot, according to the “Washington Post.”
In addition, the publication reports that the document was composed following discussions with around thirty senior officials from the United States, Ukraine, Europe, and NATO.
At the first meeting in the Oval Office, which was also attended by the heads of the CIA, the FBI, and the first man of the Pentagon, as well as a large number of other top officials from the intelligence and defense communities, Biden was given a comprehensive briefing on the Russian president’s plans for Ukraine. Thus, according to “WP,” the United States obtained unprecedented details regarding the Kremlin’s covert preparations, while Russia denied everything.
“Attack on Kiev from all sides, Zelensky’s elimination”
General Mark Milley stated at the meeting, “We believe they want to conduct a big strategic strike against Ukraine from numerous directions simultaneously.” The attack was intended to be swift and to surprise the Ukrainian soldiers.
According to intelligence, the Russians would approach both sides of Kiev from the north. A portion of the army would proceed through the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, while the other wing of Kyiv would assault from the west, pushing south from Belarus along a natural corridor between the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power facility and the surrounding marshland.
Separately, Russian forces will advance across central Ukraine to the Dnieper River from the east, while Crimean troops will seize control of the southeast coast. According to Russian plans, these activities might take several weeks.
After regrouping and resupplying, Russian soldiers would march westward, toward a north-south line that runs from Moldova to western Belarus, leaving the truncated Ukrainian state to the west – an area Putin believes is filled by incorrigible anti-Semites.
In October 2021, after being confronted with new intelligence, Biden reportedly had two reactions. He should have tried to dissuade Putin first, and he believed that he should have dispatched someone to Moscow to meet with the Russians at the highest level and warn them, “If you do this, these are the repercussions”
Second, he should have briefed allies on American information and sought their support for a unified and forceful position that Russia should be threatened with severe penalties, NATO’s defenses should be bolstered and expanded, and Ukraine should be assisted. Therefore, the United States dispatched its highest-ranking officials to Moscow and the NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Four rules
The Washington Post then reports the establishment of four significant rules:
- The United States military and NATO must avoid armed conflict with Russia.
- The conflict must continue within Ukraine’s territorial borders.
- The NATO should strengthen and preserve its cohesiveness.
- The Ukraine must be fortified and given the means to fight.
The Biden administration was particularly concerned about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, because they thought he was no match for Vladimir Putin and the math was on Russia’s side. Therefore, Vice President Biden dispatched Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Glasgow on the margins of the international climate change summit. Then, Zelensky was informed of the intelligence the United States possessed and that an attack was being planned.
And Blinken eventually admitted that the meeting had occurred. “It was just the two of us, standing two meters apart,” he stated in an interview.
However, Zelensky was initially suspicious and believed that the facts indicating that Russia could attack Ukraine were merely assumptions.
Less than two weeks after the Glasgow meeting, Ukraine’s foreign minister and Zelensky’s chief of staff visited the State Department, where a senior US official bluntly advised them to “dig trenches.”
