(C) OpenDemocracy
This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Christopher Miller’s ‘The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine’: Inside Zelenskyi’s office before Russia’s invasion [1]
[]
Date: 2023-09
In his new book ‘The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine’, American journalist Christopher Miller chronicles life in Ukraine in the run-up to Russia’s invasion – and after.
Miller first came to Ukraine in 2010 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bakhmut, a city that has been turned into a wasteland by Russia’s invasion. He then became a journalist, and has broken a number of vital stories – covering the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine.
In this excerpt, Miller writes about how Ukraine’s top officials interpreted the ‘warning signs’ that immediately preceded Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Kyiv, early 2022
Volodymyr Zelensky paced across the ornate parquet floors of his office, the clack of his black, size 8½ oxfords echoing through the cavernous building, as he studied the contents of a red folder.
Get the free oDR newsletter A weekly summary of our latest stories about the post-Soviet world. Sign up now
A stamp at the top read “top secret.” It was for the Ukrainian president’s eyes only. Inside was an intelligence briefing compiled by his National Security and Defense Council. The information contained within was so urgent and alarming that the secretary of the NSDC, Oleksiy Danilov, had rushed across town in his aging Audi to deliver it himself.
“Sir, information from our Western partners indicates your life is in grave danger,” Danilov told Zelensky. The document outlined a Russian capture-or-kill operation targeting the president.
Zelensky furrowed his brows and scrunched up his face.
“Hmm,” he grumbled. “Thank you.”
He left the folder on his desk, dismissed Danilov, and headed down the hall to another meeting.
It wasn’t the first time Zelensky had been warned of such a thing and he was, frankly, tired of hearing about it – even if he was finally beginning to believe it.
For weeks, the United States and other Western nations had been alerting him to the threat of a Russian invasion, the goal of which, they said, was to capture Kyiv and install a pro-Russian puppet government. On a secret visit to the Ukrainian capital in mid-January, CIA Director Bill Burns had also told Zelensky that there was a threat to life, my sources in the president’s office would later tell me.
Burns warned that the Kremlin had compiled a “kill list” of Ukrainians who were to be assassinated or sent to prison camps. The list included government officials, journalists, activists, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQ Ukrainians. But Zelensky himself was at the top. And shortly before the intelligence report landed in Zelensky’s hands, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, had been briefed in Washington. “I was received by President Biden. And then we had a meeting with Secretary Blinken. We delivered our comment to the press and then I was asked to go to a separate room,” he told me later. “And in that room I received an update, a pretty detailed update on the Russian preparations. And the guys who were speaking with me said the invasion was likely to begin within like 48 hours.”
The Biden Administration was especially and unusually vocal about the looming Russian threat. It had first sounded an alarm in March and April 2021, when Russia began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near its border with Ukraine and in occupied Crimea. Russia withdrew some troops that summer but left the equipment in place. Then, in October 2021, Washington sounded a second alarm when it noticed Russia was moving its forces back toward the border and deploying more units on new fronts. By December, US intelligence was saying that roughly 120,000 Russian troops, along with fighter aircraft and ballistic missiles, were in place, and that the troop numbers were likely to increase to 175,000, maybe more. American General Mark Milley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Russia’s troop build-up “larger in scale and scope… than anything we’ve seen in recent memory.” President Joe Biden showed solidarity with Ukraine, warning the Kremlin of severe consequences should Vladimir Putin give the order to invade.
Zelensky’s annoyance was evident to the public three weeks before Danilov walked into his office, when the president held a press conference on 28 January. Foreign media, myself included, gathered at the baroque-styled Mariinsky Palace, the official residence of the President of Ukraine, designed and built in the eighteenth century. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling of the gilded room. There were samovars filled with coffee and tea. Servers dressed in uniform and white gloves opened doors for us and offered pastries and fruit. The mood among us journalists was tense. We had, of course, been the ones writing about the Western intelligence warnings. Some of us had received off-the-record briefings ourselves from our respective government sources, who said that it might be a good idea to leave Kyiv and head west, where Russia was unlikely to invade. “I know you probably want to be in the thick of it when it happens, but I’m telling you this isn’t going to be like 2014,” a senior US official who I’d known for many years told me. But the Ukrainians appeared less anxious. I chatted on the sidelines with Zelensky’s press secretary, Sergii Nykyforov, before the event. He was calm and reassuring. “I think it’s possible Russia might do something, but I’m not sure it will be like they are saying,” he told me.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-invasion-christopher-miller-the-war-came-to-us-life-and-death-book-extract/
Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/
