For months, Biden administration officials have watched warily as Putin has massed tens of thousands of troops and deployed tanks and missiles along Ukraine’s border. As the summer wore on, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had focused on the growing body of intelligence about Russia and Ukraine. He had set up the Oval Office meeting after his own thinking had shifted from uncertainty about Russia’s intentions, to concern that he was too pessimistic about the prospects for military action, to concern. The session was one of several meetings officials held on Ukraine in the fall — sometimes in smaller groups — but it was notable for the detailed intelligence picture presented. Biden and Vice President Harris took their seats in armchairs before the fireplace, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined the directors of the national intelligence and the CIA on the couches around the coffee table. Tasked by Sullivan with compiling a comprehensive overview of Russia’s intentions, Biden was told that intelligence on Putin’s operational plans, added to ongoing deployments along the Ukrainian border, showed that all the pieces were now in place. for a mass attack. The US intelligence community had penetrated many parts of Russia’s political leadership, spy apparatus and military, from the highest levels to the front lines, according to US officials. Story continues below ad Story continues below ad Far more radical than Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and fomenting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, Putin’s war plans envisioned seizing most of the country. Using easel-mounted maps in front of the Resolute Desk, Milley showed the positions of Russian troops and the Ukrainian territory they intended to capture. It was a plan of shocking audacity, one that could pose an immediate threat to NATO’s eastern flank or even destroy Europe’s post-World War II security architecture. As he absorbed the briefing, Biden, who had taken office promising to keep the country out of new wars, was adamant that Putin must either be prevented or dealt with and that the United States must not act alone. However, NATO was far from unified on how to deal with Moscow, and US credibility was weak. After a disastrous occupation of Iraq, the chaos that followed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and four years of President Donald Trump seeking to undermine the alliance, it was far from certain that Biden could effectively lead a Western response to a expansionist Russia. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock) Ukraine was a troubled former Soviet republic with a history of corruption, and the US and allied response to past Russian aggression there has been uncertain and divided. When the invasion came, the Ukrainians would need significant new weapons to defend themselves. Very little could guarantee a Russian victory. But too much could trigger a direct NATO conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. This report, in previously unreported detail, sheds new light on the uphill battle to restore US credibility, the struggle to balance the secrecy surrounding the information with the need to convince others of its veracity, and the challenge of determining of how the world’s most powerful military alliance would help a less-than-perfect republic on Russia’s border defy an attack without NATO firing a shot. The first in a series of articles examining the road to war and the military campaign in Ukraine, drawn from in-depth interviews with more than three dozen senior US, Ukrainian, European and NATO officials about a global crisis that has still finished. be determined. Some spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and internal discussions. The Kremlin did not respond to repeated requests for comment. As Milley laid out the order of forces that October morning, he and the others summed up Putin’s intentions. “We estimate that they are planning to launch a major strategic attack on Ukraine from multiple directions simultaneously,” Milley told the president. “Their version of ‘shock and awe.’ “ Story continues below ad Story continues below ad According to the information, the Russians would come from the north, on either side of Kiev. One force would move east of the capital through the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, while the other would flank Kyiv in the west, pushing south from Belarus through a natural gap between the “exclusion zone” at the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the surrounding swamps. The attack would take place in winter so that the hard earth would make the terrain easily passable for tanks. Forming a pincer around the capital, Russian troops planned to capture Kyiv in three to four days. The Spetsnaz, their special forces, would find and remove President Volodymyr Zelensky, killing him if necessary, and install a Kremlin-friendly puppet government. Separately, Russian forces would come from the east and drive through central Ukraine to the Dnieper River, while troops from Crimea would occupy the southeast coast. These actions could last several weeks, Russian plans predicted. [Maps of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] After pausing to regroup and rearm, they would then push westward, toward a north-south line running from Moldova to western Belarus, leaving a Ukrainian state in the west—an area that Putin reckoned was populated by irredeemables neo-Nazi Russophobes. The United States had received “extraordinary detail” about the Kremlin’s secret plans for a war it continued to deny it intended, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines later explained. They included not only the deployment of troops and weapons and operational strategy, but also fine points like Putin’s “unusual and sharp increases in funding for military contingency operations and for the creation of reserve forces, even as other pressing needs, such as dealing with a pandemic , were residual resources,” he said. This was no mere intimidation exercise, unlike a large-scale Russian deployment in April, when Putin’s forces threatened Ukraine’s border but never attacked. Some in the White House have had trouble wrapping their minds around the scale of the Russian leader’s ambitions. “It didn’t seem like something a sensible country would do,” one meeting attendee later said of the planned takeover of most of a country of 232,000 square miles and nearly 45 million people. Parts of Ukraine were deeply anti-Russian, raising the specter of an uprising even if Putin toppled the government in Kyiv. And yet intelligence indicated that more and more troops were arriving and settling in for a full campaign. Ammunition, food and critical supplies were deposited in the Russian camps. Biden pressured his advisers. Did they really think that this time Putin was likely to strike? Story continues below ad Story continues below ad Yes, they confirmed it. This is real. Although the administration would insist publicly over the next several months that it did not believe Putin had made the final decision, the one thing his team could not tell the president that fall day was exactly when the Russian president would press the button. trigger. CIA Director William J. Burns, who had served as the US ambassador to Moscow and had the most direct interactions with Putin of anyone in the Biden administration, described the Russian leader to others as fixated on Ukraine. Control over the country was synonymous with Putin’s concept of Russian identity and power. The accuracy of the war planning, combined with Putin’s belief that Ukraine should be reabsorbed into the homeland, left him in no doubt that Putin was ready to invade. “I thought he was very serious,” Burns said months later, recalling the briefing.
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The news had underscored the promise of Putin’s own words. Three months earlier, in July, he had published a 7,000-word essay, “On the Historical Unity Between Russians and Ukrainians,” full of complaints and dubious claims. Russians and Ukrainians, he argued, were “one people” – an idea rooted in Putin’s claims of “blood ties” – and Moscow had “stolen” its own territory from a treacherous West. “I am sure that the real sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in cooperation with Russia,” Putin wrote. A few weeks before the essay appeared, Biden and Putin had held a June 16 summit that both said was “constructive.” At that point, Ukraine was a concern, but one that White House officials believed could be addressed. As the White House delegation left the meeting, held in Geneva, a senior Biden adviser would later recall, “we didn’t get on the plane and come home and think the world was on the brink of a major war in Europe.” But Putin’s subsequent post “got our attention in a big way.” Sullivan said later. “We started looking at what’s going on here, what’s his end game? How hard will he push?’ Preemptively, on August 27, Biden authorized the withdrawal of $60 million in largely defensive weapons from the US stockpile and shipment to Ukraine. In late summer, as they gathered intelligence from the border and from Moscow, analysts…
