US Intelligence redeemed itself with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The intelligence services of United States found redemption in war Ukrainewhich they very accurately predicted, having been vilified for not anticipating the lightning strike of Kabul or for imagining Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in 2003.

The US army already understood in October that the movements of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, which Moscow presented as exercises, “were not normal”, since the military device was like that of an invasion, several officials told AFP.

The Pentagon informed the White House of its concerns and the intelligence services immediately began to investigate.

Some advisers to the president expressed doubts, but Joe Biden took the matter very seriously.

On November 2, Biden sent CIA Director Bill Burns to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Burns, a former ambassador to Moscow and a Russian-speaker, raised Washington’s “serious” concerns over Russian troop movements with the Kremlin chief, CNN later reported.

Half a dozen colonels from the intelligence directorate of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff analyzed the information received from CIA analysts and from the listening services of the NSA, the military intelligence agency, to anticipate the attack plan of the Russian forces .

From the basements of the Pentagon “these heroes in the shadows set the tone for the entire intelligence community,” celebrated one of the officials consulted on condition of anonymity.

axes of attack

His work ended in January with the development of a map of the region that provided with astonishing precision the axes of attack of the Russian army, from the north in Kiev, from the east in Kharkiv and from the south in Mariupol.

Wanting to prevent conflict and neutralize Russian disinformation attempts, the Joe Biden administration quickly decided to release information classified as defense secret.

In early February, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby claimed that Moscow was planning to film “a very violent propaganda video, showing dead bodies and actors playing mourners” and claiming to have been attacked by Ukrainians, in order to use it as a pretext. to invade Ukraine.

Shortly afterward, the press was invited to meet with senior intelligence officials, who rarely speak to journalists.

They reported that Russia was intensifying preparations for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine which they showed on a map, and even gave a date: mid-February, after the close of the Beijing Olympics.

But the scenario published that day by the media around the world was met with skepticism in Europe.

The date

The supposed date of the invasion was postponed for a few days, but the United States was so sure of its information that on the night of February 23, the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, announced that it could be launched “before the end of the night.” ”.

On the morning of the 24th, Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

The scenario proposed by the intelligence services was accurate, with some exceptions.

Analysts did not anticipate the fierce Ukrainian resistance or the determination of President Volodimir Zelensky, who managed to galvanize the population. They feared that Kiev would fall within 48 hours and that Zelensky would be immediately deposed to be replaced by a pro-Russian regime.

Two weeks later, Kiev is still not in Russian hands and Zelensky is given a standing ovation by the British Parliament.

US intelligence also feared that the Ukrainian military would be crippled by a Russian cyberattack from the start of the conflict.

But while Kiev has modernized its military, it still maintains planes that date back to the Soviet era and use the same radio communication system as the Russian military, so Russia cannot cripple the Ukrainian military because it would affect its own forces.