The occupying troops were ready to kill Volodymyr Zelensky “if the situation required it.”
In the White House in October 2021, it was already clearly understood that Russia would launch a large-scale offensive against Ukraine.
The Washington Post writes about this , relying on its sources in the White House and NATO.
According to the publication, in October 2021, Biden held a meeting with the military and intelligence officers, who, based on their analysis, convinced the US president that the Kremlin was preparing for war.play video
Satellite images, intercepts of conversations by intelligence officers testified that Russia was preparing to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine.
Putin’s plans were ambitious: the dictator expected to take over most of Ukraine and then threaten NATO’s eastern flank. The United States understood that it was urgent to prepare Ukraine for war. However, the problem was that some NATO countries lowered the level of confidence in the United States. In the fall, the White House began to look for ways to increase the defense capability of Ukraine.
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said in October that according to intelligence, Putin plans to launch a major strategic attack on Ukraine simultaneously from several directions.
In particular, it was reported that the Russians want to surround Kyiv from all sides. For 3-4 days, the rashists planned to take the capital of Ukraine. The occupying troops were ready to kill Volodymyr Zelensky “if the situation required it.” Instead of Zelensky, the Russian Federation wanted to appoint its own puppet.
In a few weeks, the Russians wanted to reach the west of Ukraine, to the North-South line that stretches from Moldova to Western Belarus. On this territory, the rashists wanted to leave the wreckage of the Ukrainian state. They especially emphasized that “neo-Nazis” live on those lands.
US intelligence was shocked: they did not believe that Russia would lose its common sense, knowing that this could turn into unpredictable consequences. Biden pressed his advisers on whether they really thought Putin would strike this time. And they said it was real.
In particular, CIA Director William Burns, who served as US ambassador to Moscow and had the most direct contact with Putin of anyone in the Biden administration, called the Russian leader obsessed with Ukraine.
According to intelligence, Putin calculated that his attempt to take over Ukraine would cause outrage in the West, but not concrete action. This was due to many factors – the US desire to avoid new wars after Afghanistan, the pandemic, the dismissal of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the presidential election in France and the post-Brexit economic downturn in the UK.
Biden, after the October secret meeting, made two decisions – to warn Moscow about the consequences of the war and to inform Kyiv and the allies about the threat that was looming.
The publication noted that intelligence data was also transferred to the Ukrainian leadership. But in Ukraine they were skeptical about this. Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba explained this by saying that Ukraine asked for details, but there were none. Not fully believed in a full-scale invasion in Europe and NATO.
On January 12, CIA Director William Burns warned Zelensky about Russia’s plans in Kyiv. Burns told the President of Ukraine all the details that American intelligence had learned. Zelensky learned that the Kremlin is preparing a blitzkrieg against Ukraine and one of the goals is the point “to seize Kyiv and eliminate the central government.”
US intelligence assumed the option that the landing of the Russian army would land in Gostomel in order to launch a “lightning assault on Kyiv” from there.
(C)UNIAN 2022
And despite all the intelligence they kept holding back significant weapons that could have helped!!!
1/ This whole damn holocaust could have been prevented if Biden/Boris had immediately set up a NFZ and announced that ground troops would be on their way.
2/ If the US had a decent president in 2014, he would have either forced Nato to accept Ukraine as a member, or established a permanent US/UK base there.
So much bloodshed and agony would have been prevented. May a thousand curses be upon France and Germany for blocking Ukraine and Georgia from Nato.
May France and Germany receive thousands of ruskie missiles into THEIR cities!
The main problem with practically all western leaders over the years is they expect Putin to act and think like they do. That is a fantasy based on nothing. Putin has always subscribed to a bi-polar political reality in the world. Equal but opposite to the USA/Europe. Like a 5-year old child you can say white and they automatically say black. Up/Down, good/bad, it doesn’t matter. Then they say the war was started because nobody was listening to poor little Vladolf.
The Biden administration handled the situation all wrong before the little rat sent his goons into Ukraine. Not giving Ukraine what it needed was one big mistake, and another was to announce what we would not do. How many people could be still alive if we had a POTUS like Reagan? We’ll never know, but we can take an educated guess.