The further we get from the day of the full-scale invasion, the more Zelensky and his allies try to mythologize the events of those days in a favorable light for themselves. However, facts indicate that the war was not a surprise for the president. As early as January 18, CIA Director William Burns detailed Putin’s plan during his visit to Kyiv. On January 27, 2022, in a phone call, Biden again warned Zelensky that war “was almost certain as soon as the ground froze over later in February.” Although the Ukrainian president tried to deny this forecast, citing his own data, he was well aware of all the necessary information and the full extent of the risk.
Even accounting for Zelensky’s naivety and incompetence, he knew from at least February 22 about the inevitability of the attack. On that day, Ukrainian intelligence learned that Russian military at the border with Ukraine began receiving combat orders. Nonetheless, Zelensky still pretends that the onset of war was a shock to him.
To put it mildly, that’s not quite true. It can only be agreed that the president was not prepared for war. He consciously and voluntarily sabotaged the execution of a set of actions that could have minimized the consequences of the Russian invasion. Here, it would be apt to quote item 20 of Article 106 of the Constitution of Ukraine:
“The President decides, in accordance with the law, on the total or partial mobilization and the imposition of martial law in Ukraine or in its particular localities in case of a THREAT OF AGGRESSION, danger to the state independence of Ukraine.”
One does not need to be a major analyst or expert to understand the fatal mistake made by President Zelensky. By neglecting the security of his citizens, he doomed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to occupation, and tens of thousands of civilians died.
Representatives of Zelensky’s team have repeatedly noted the “fearlessness” of the president. Apparently hinting that after the start of the war, he refused the Americans’ offer to evacuate him to a safe region, to Lviv or another locality in Western Ukraine. This information did indeed appear on The Washington Post website on February 25, citing American officials and Congress members.
“U.S. government officials spoke with Zelensky about security issues, particularly about the safest places for the president to ensure the continuity of state leadership,” said an unnamed White House representative.
However, several months later, The Washington Post, which initially reported the evacuation offer, added important details to this narrative. In an article dated September 24, 2022, Paul Sonne and Isabelle Khurshudyan wrote that Zelensky expressed willingness to resign or LEAVE KYIV if it would help end the war:
“In the first hours of the war, when Western officials urged him to evacuate, Zelensky told them he would gladly leave or resign if it would end the war.”
These words can be interpreted in various ways. But it’s worth noting that Volodymyr Zelensky now carefully avoids any mention of the fact that he indeed considered the possibility of fleeing Kyiv and leaving his post.
Insiders from the President’s Office claim that in the first days of the war, Zelensky simply did not know what to do, and some people in his circle seriously considered the possibility of reconciliation with Putin, even at the cost of territorial concessions. However, he did not pursue this due to two reasons: the flight of the head of state could have returned the country to a state similar to February 2014, in other words, Zelensky’s departure could be interpreted by the opposition as treason. There was a risk that Poroshenko would take control of the parliament and become the acting president. Another reason was that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, General Zaluzhny, explained to Zelensky that the situation was not hopeless.
What was happening in Ukraine at the moment of invasion? Let me provide just a few facts:
On the border with Belarus, there were practically no Ukrainian troops, only border guards. Russians easily entered Ukrainian territory through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and started advancing towards Kyiv. The 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which was supposed to protect the capital, was redeployed towards Irpin only on February 23.
Days before the war began, almost all units of the National Guard were withdrawn from the Gostomel airfield. The airfield, which, according to U.S. intelligence, was one of the main targets for the Russians, was left with only 150 soldiers for protection.
Kyiv’s Zhuliany airport had no military protection at all: neither police nor National Guard. To protect against a possible assault, General Serhiy Krivonos ordered the airport’s runway to be doused with machine oil.
A week before the invasion, Zaluzhny received orders to redeploy the 92nd Brigade of the Armed Forces from the Kharkiv direction to Donbass. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces did not follow this presidential directive and kept the military near Kharkiv, thereby saving Ukraine’s second-largest city from occupation.
Interestingly, on January 20, 2022, a month before the war, Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with The Washington Post suggested that “Kharkiv could be occupied.” These words caused such a large resonance in Ukraine that even the president’s loyal mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, expressed his outrage.
Almost all the Western weapons: portable Javelin, NLAW, and Stinger missile systems, provided by the UK and the USA, were in storage at the Yavoriv military range near the Polish border at the time of the invasion. The armed forces were given only a few units.
The Russians’ plan on the Kyiv direction was relatively easy to read. The Kremlin had so overestimated its forces that it hoped to replicate the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Russian special forces were supposed to quickly capture the Gostomel and Vasylkiv airfields, after which these airfields were to continuously receive military transport planes with thousands of paratroopers. Kyiv was intended to be blocked from three sides: north, west, and east. Kremlin strategists hoped that Ukrainian forces would not resist.
This plan was partially successful. Russian forces did indeed almost reach Kyiv. In the east, they entrenched themselves in villages near the satellite city of Brovary, but did not enter the city. In the north, they entered the satellite city of Bucha (15 km from Kyiv), but in the neighboring Irpin, they could not establish control. Russians crossed the Zhytomyr highway leading from Kyiv to the west several times. But further south, towards Boyarka and Vasylkiv, they could not proceed. On the night of February 26, near the Vasylkiv military airport, Russians landed paratroopers from parachutes. The battle lasted all night, but the occupiers failed to capture the airfield. That same night, a Ukrainian Su-27 shot down a Russian military transport plane IL-76 with several dozen paratroopers on board.
As for the Gostomel airport, which served as a base for the world’s largest transport aircraft “Mriya” and other planes produced by the Antonov plant in peacetime, the battle for it began on February 24. That day, 34 Russian Ka-52 and Mi-8 helicopters landed approximately 300 paratroopers on its territory. During the flight across the Kyiv Reservoir, several helicopters were shot down, but this did not prevent the Russians from capturing the airfield.
In the evening of February 24, Ukrainian military recaptured the airport, but the Russians captured it again, this time with the help of ground forces. Time passed, but Gostomel did not start receiving military transport planes with the Russian paratroopers, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces damaged its runway with artillery fire. In the battle for the airport, the AN-225 “Mriya” aircraft was destroyed. According to the official Ukrainian version, the Russians are to blame.
Experts believe that the failure to capture the airfields in Gostomel and Vasylkiv was a severe blow to the Russian military leadership, as they apparently had no backup plan for capturing Kyiv.
Almost everywhere, Russians encountered fierce resistance from Ukrainian troops. On February 25, the situation was exacerbated by the blowing up of a dam on the Irpin River. Water from the Kyiv Reservoir turned the small river into a large natural barrier over the following weeks. As a result, the Russians could not enter Kyiv and Vyshhorod from the north. From the west, along the Zhytomyr highway, the road to the capital was also closed: near the village of Stoyanka, Ukrainians blew up a bridge.
Unable to break through the defense near Irpin, in early March, Russian occupying forces decided to focus on advancing to Kyiv through the village of Moschun, located to the northwest, halfway between Irpin and Vyshhorod. The Battle of Moschun became one of the bloodiest in the early stage of the war, with dozens of soldiers dying on both sides. The Ukrainian Armed Forces held their positions, and on March 16, they drove the Russians out of the village. A few days later, Ukrainian units, with the support of heavy artillery, pushed the Russian forces back to the Irpin River.
The Battle of Kyiv ended in defeat for the Russians. Putin realized that his plan had failed, and capturing Kyiv would not be possible. The Kremlin was not prepared for a real war: the calculation was only that the Armed Forces of Ukraine would not last even a few days, Zelensky would flee the capital, and the Russian army would triumphantly hold a victory parade on Khreshchatyk. Without a backup plan, on March 29, the Russian General Staff began withdrawing troops from under Kyiv to reinforce their positions in the East and South of Ukraine. In these directions, the occupiers were lucky. They managed to capture vast territories, which they now had to hold at any cost.
>>> 43. The Bucha Massacre, Changing the Character of the War