The Washington Post has a fascinating, extensive analysis of the months leading up to the Russia-Ukraine war, beginning with an October 2021 morning in which the U.S.'s top intelligence leaders convened in the Oval Office for "an urgent meeting with President Biden." With information from satellite images, intercepted communications and human sources in hand, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan detailed how his thinking about the prospect of war had changed from uncertainty to "concern he was being too skeptical." The evidence showed that "all the pieces were now in place for a massive assault."
Biden was confronted by a complex situation. He knew the U.S. could not act alone, yet NATO relations were still fractured from the Trump era and there were European doubts about U.S. credibility after its calamitous invasion of Iraq and the Afghanistan debacle. The Post article — one in a series — tracks "the uphill climb to restore U.S. credibility, the attempt to balance secrecy around intelligence with the need to persuade others of its truth, and the challenge of determining how the world’s most powerful military alliance would help a less-than-perfect democracy on Russia’s border defy an attack without NATO firing a shot."
President Putin's own words helped to confirm intelligence findings. In July he published a 7,000-word screed, "On the Historical Unity Between Russians and Ukrainians," arguing that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people"; Russia, he wrote, had been "robbed" of Ukraine by the West. "I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia," further wrote Putin. The Biden administration had believed that the Ukrainian issue was concerning but manageable. That was still true after a June summit in Geneva. "We didn’t get on the plane and come home and think the world was on the cusp of a major war in Europe," said a Biden aide. Putin's essay, however, "caught our attention in a big way," Sullivan said later.
"In a grim actuarial assessment," U.S. intelligence concluded that Putin, at 68, was "running out of time" to legitimately portray himself as another Peter the Great, while Putin figured that the West's reaction to his Ukraine invasion "would be big on outrage but limited in actual punishment." He was at least partially correct. U.S> intelligence informed President Zelensky of its findings. The Ukrainian president later complained that the Americans adequately warned but inadequately supported his nation with the proper weapons to defend itself. "You can say a million times, 'Listen, there may be an invasion.' Okay, there may be an invasion — will you give us planes?" Zelensky said. "Will you give us air defenses? 'Well, you’re not a member of NATO.' Oh, okay, then what are we talking about?"
At a G-20 conference in late October, Biden shared parts of the new intelligence and the U.S.'s conclusions with British, French and German leaders. In mid-November, America's Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines met with NATO's North Atlantic Council. She revealed the evidence but offered no recommendations on policy. Only the British and Baltic states believed in her brief presentation; others, she recalled, "were skeptical of the idea that President Putin was seriously preparing for the possibility of a large-scale invasion." Writes the Post: "Paris and Berlin remembered emphatic U.S. claims about intelligence on Iraq. The shadow of that deeply flawed analysis hung over all the discussions before the invasion." Said François Heisbourg, an adviser to French officials, "American intelligence is not considered to be a naturally reliable source. It was considered to be prone to political manipulation."
The early schism remained the case for months. Said a senior Biden administration official: "I think there were basically three flavors." Some in Western Europe believed that Putin was merely practicing "coercive diplomacy"; or "he was just building up to see what he could get"; or "he’s not going to invade … it’s crazy." Related a senior European official, "The intelligence was narrated repeatedly, consistently, clearly, credibly, in a lot of detail with a very good script and supporting evidence. I don’t remember one key moment where the lightbulb went off. It was the volume of the lights in the room."
Biden was also having trouble convincing Ukrainian officials of the impending danger — although some of the problems were of the Americans' own making. Once, when Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba and Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, visited Washington, a U.S. official handed them a cup of coffee with a smile and said "Guys, dig the trenches!" Kuleba said "When we smiled back," the official said "'I’m serious. Start digging trenches.... You will be attacked. A large-scale attack, and you have to prepare for it.' We asked for details; there were none." Zelensky, too, was skeptical. Recalled his aides: "We took all of the information that our Western partners were giving us seriously. But let’s be honest: Imagine if all of this panic that so many people were pushing had taken place. Creating panic is a method of the Russians.... Imagine if this panic had started three or four months beforehand. What would’ve happened to the economy? Would we have been able to hold on for five months like we have?"
The Biden administration had another, unilateral worry: the U.S. was determined to avoid a direct conflict with Russia, which led to each decision being overburdened, in the estimation of many, about how much and what types of weapons should be given Ukraine to defend itself. "I make no apologies for the fact that one of our objectives here is to avoid direct conflict with Russia," says National Security Adviser Sullivan.
But he should make apologies. He misread the degree of Putin's determination to confront the West. As I and others have often observed, the Russian dictator is not suicidal and he's not stupid. He would not unleash tactical nukes on Ukraine knowing of a Western response that would set the Russian economy back to its Leninist days. Nevertheless, the Post reports that "the administration found 'incredible' the notion, as some later argued in hindsight, that 'if only we would have given' the Ukrainians more arms, 'none of this would have happened.'" That's a deliberate misdirection; it is not what the administration's detractors have argued. We have acknowledged that Putin's invasion was inevitable, but also that in the prewar and early periods of the conflict, Ukraine should have been supplied with hundreds of HIMARS and other heavy armaments.
The Ukrainian foreign minister's assessment is straightforward and clear-eyed. While expressing gratitude for U.S. military aid shipped to date — "No other country in the world did more for Ukraine to get the necessary weapons than the United States since 24 February" — he has also noted that its "non-provocation" strategy has been terribly flawed. "Where did it take us to? I think this war — with thousands killed and wounded, territories lost, part of the economy destroyed ... is the best answer to those who still advocate the non-provocation of Russia.“
On the eve of Putin's 24 February invasion, Zelensky was "alarmed," reports the Post. His chief of staff had Sullivan on the phone, telling him that the Ukrainian president wanted to speak with President Biden. Sullivan agreed. Zelensky asked Biden to "get us all the intelligence you possibly can now. We will fight, we will defend, we can hold, but we need your help."
And so remains Ukraine's crisis.