project put it in had to invadeUkraine And conquered it within a few days with a lightning operation. defend Kyiv However, surprised flies Which he did not think he would find in a dead end more than a month after the start of the conflict. how did Zelensky Did he arrange his forces to repel the heavy Russian attack? According to the Wall Street Journal, Ukraine was able to withstand the early stages of the invasion thanks to the important information provided by the CIA.
CIA and Zelensky meeting in mid-January
In mid-January, before the conflict broke out – the Wall Street Journal revealed – CIA Director William Burns made a secret trip to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, sharing with him the instructions for the Russian attack and, in particular, for the attack on Gostomel airport north of Kyiv. The airfield was supposed to serve as a bridge for the Russians to encourage the influx of reinforcements with planes and parrots, but the blitzkrieg failed. It is also possible that the Kremlin was counting on the actions of the fifth column, made up of collaborators, who were in favor of liquidating Zelensky or forcing him to flee. In those dramatic hours from the start of the Russian offensive, the United States actually offered the Ukrainian president a way out, to bring him back to safety. But he refused and continued to remain in the capital to lead the resistance.
The Soviets underestimated Ukraine
The Soviets “underestimated the Afghans in the 1980s,” just as the Russians today underestimate the Ukrainians. This is the thesis put forward by American veterans of Afghanistan, five weeks after the start of Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, a war whose course is often compared to the catastrophe of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that began in late 1979. It will show that in Moscow they have not learned one of the most important lessons. This failure: overestimating their military capabilities and underestimating their opponents. Bruce Riedel, who worked in the secret CIA program to aid the mujahideen resistance, notes the irony of recent events: Putin, by invading Ukraine, seemed to want to restore the glory of the Soviet Union, whose collapse the Russian president defined as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century” . Instead, referring to the Washington Post, Vladimir Putin, repeating some mistakes made by Soviet leaders, “has questioned Russian power, let alone its future.” “Trying to reverse the story – that’s the opinion of another veteran of the war in Afghanistan, Milton Bearden – he could instead repeat it.”
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