Re:Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, Feb 26, 2022
by enkid on Sunday February 27, 2022 @01:11PM
(#30490841)
The US clearly had some sort of intelligence that the order had already been given, but France and Ukraine, and other countries without access to that or skeptical of the source specifically said it was unlikely up until a day or two before. The point is that unless you have an advanced intelligence apparatus, trying to guess what Putin is going to do is meaningless at this point, you have to prepare for every eventuality. Here's an article clearly saying that invasion was not imminent based on Ukrainian intelligence on 20 Feb.[0]
[0] https://fakty.com.ua/ua/ukraine/20220220-reznikov-meta-kreml...
Quite a lot of people said he seemed like he was going to, for quite a few weeks in advance, though they were trying to dissuade him, just counting people in the US government, NATO, etc.
> The president of Ukraine said like two days before hand that it was unlikely.
He said that the West needed to move forward the sanctions threatened for after an invasion to before, and that Russian behavior depended on immediate, united Western action.
The US media played up the part you refer to and downplayed the I assume our friends will heed my clearly-correct and urgent advice context, because they had a narrative they were selling of “Biden Admin sees imminent invasion, but the Admin is paranoid and everyone else, even the people who would be attacked, disagrees”.