The Kremlin was certain of victory in Ukraine, and Russian officials had already picked pads in Kyiv before the war began, intelligence services reportedly revealed. increase.
In February, before Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border, a leading Moscow broker said that according to information provided to his post in Washington, the Ukrainian border was closed. I assumed that it would exceed.
Among them was Igor Kovalenko, a high-ranking FSB official who had spied for Ukraine. According to intercepts by Ukrainian and Western intelligence services, Kovalenko spotted an apartment in Kyiv and asked an FSB subordinate for the contact information of an informant who lived there.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the informant had left the city in the days leading up to the war, leaving the keys for the Russians to use his apartment overlooking the Dnieper.
In fact, the Russians were so convinced that they would take Kyiv that they had to send informants and He issued similar instructions to his spies and prepared a network of secure homes for his operatives and lodgings for his officers.
However, Russian soldiers have not yet set foot in Kyiv.
Just one month after the invasion began, Russian forces were bogged down around the capital, unable to encircle it, and hastily retreated.
Russian propaganda at the time made the move to Kyiv look like a feint, trying to force Ukraine to target its true destination, the eastern industrial zone known as Donbass. postponed. down today.
But the interception of communications does not only indicate that Russia intended to "decapitate" the Ukrainian government by seizing the capital and removing its leader. Interception shows that the Russians thought it would be easy.
"They expected someone to open the gate," a senior Ukrainian official told The Washington Post. "They did not expect resistance."
