The well-trained and thoughtful Colonel General Alexander Syrsky is one of those hardened officers who prepare for all unpredictable situations, even those scenarios that seem very unlikely..

The claim that Kyiv, where fighting on the city streets can exhaust even the best troops, could be one of Vladimir Putin's first targets, was rejected even by the Ukrainian army command..

“To think of the Russian authorities unleashing such a brazen, large-scale aggression, frankly, I could not even imagine such a thing,” Colonel General Syrsky, who fought against Russian forces in the Donbas for many years before he was assigned to organize the defense of Kyiv.

“It seemed to me that if an active battle did begin, it would be mainly in the east, within the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.. But we are military. This means that no matter what I believe in, what I don’t believe in, and what everything looks like, it was necessary to take the necessary actions, ”added the Ukrainian military.

Given the location of the Russian army along the Ukrainian border, Syrsky determined that if she began to attack Kyiv, her columns would move along two or three main highways, trying to quickly enter the capital and overthrow the government.. The Kremlin expected that only weak Ukrainian units, disoriented by political chaos after the flight of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his ministers, would be engaged in the defense of Kyiv.

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To protect the city, Syrsky organized two circles of defense: one in the suburbs, and another one in the capital itself.. He wanted the outer circle to be as far away from the inner circle as possible in order to protect the suburbs from shelling and tie up Russian forces in the battles on the approaches to Kyiv..

The Ukrainian general divided the city and its surroundings into sectors, each of which was assigned to generals from military educational centers. Thus the chain of command was created.. All units of the Ukrainian army and special services reported to this structure. Tactical decisions were made by officers on the ground without consultation with headquarters.

“A week before the invasion, the Ukrainian army moved all command posts in the field, to potential directions of the Russian offensive. Syrsky also ordered the withdrawal of planes and helicopters from the main bases and to place them as far as possible from obvious targets for air strikes,” the article says..

As for the tank force, only the 72nd mechanized brigade was available to defend Kyiv.. And it wasn't enough to defend such a big city. Syrsky said that to solve this problem, he ordered all training centers to create temporary battalions and send artillery systems normally used for training to Kyiv..

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Part of the equipment was brought from the training ground " Each self-propelled howitzer weighs 46 tons and fires 203 mm projectiles at a distance of up to 30 kilometers. Syrsky ordered the artillerymen to take defensive positions outside the city in the northeast and northwest, expecting that the Russian offensive would take place in these directions..

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said all these measures were critical. Because in the first hours of the war, Russia attacked the bases where all this equipment was based in peacetime.

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