On a sunny morning in October, the leaders of the U.S. intelligence, military, and diplomatic corps gathered in the Oval Office for an urgent meeting with President Joe Biden.. They brought with them classified intelligence analyzes based on satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and intelligence from agents.. Everything said that Vladimir Putin is preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Washington Post publishes new data on the prerequisites for the war that Moscow unleashed against the Ukrainian state. And how difficult it was for the White House to convince allies and even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that a catastrophe was looming.. For months, the Biden administration has kept a close eye on Putin as he amassed tens of thousands of soldiers, tanks and missiles to the Ukrainian border.. As summer ended, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan focused on increasingly troubling intelligence about Russia and Ukraine.. He arranged a meeting in the Oval Office after he himself changed his attitude towards Russian intentions from skeptical to anxious..

Putin planned a much more radical operation than the annexation of Crimea and the incitement of a hybrid conflict in the Donbas in 2014 were. This time he wanted to capture almost all of Ukraine. Spreading the cards on stands in front of the President's desk, Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out the deployment of Russian troops, as well as which Ukrainian territories they want to capture..

This was an extremely audacious plan that could directly threaten NATO's eastern flank or even destroy Europe's post-World War II security architecture..

After listening to a briefing, President Joe Biden, who came to power with promises that his country would not enter new wars, decided that Putin must be contained or defeated.. But the US should not act alone.

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However, NATO at that time did not have unity on how to deal with Moscow.. Meanwhile, credibility in America itself was weak.. After the disastrous occupation of Iraq, the chaos of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and four years of Donald Trump's presidency trying to undermine the alliance, it was not clear whether Biden could orchestrate and lead a Western response to Russian expansionism.. At a meeting in October, Milley summed up Putin's intentions.

“We believe that they are planning to organize a serious attack against Ukraine in many directions at the same time.. This is their version of the shock offensive,” he told the US President.

According to intelligence, Russia was going to invade from the north and approach each side of Kyiv.. One group was supposed to break into the capital through Chernihiv, and the other was to bypass Kyiv from the west, advancing from the south of Belarus through the " Moscow wanted to launch an offensive in the winter, because tanks would be able to move better on frozen soil.. Having taken Kyiv in pincers, the Russian army expected to capture the Ukrainian capital in 3-4 days. Then the “special forces” forces were supposed to find President Volodymyr Zelensky, kill him if necessary, and replace him with a puppet government loyal to the Kremlin..

At the same time, another grouping of Russian forces was to launch an offensive in the east, to break through the central part of Ukraine to the Dnieper. And the troops from the Crimea - to capture the southeast coast. Moscow took several weeks to do this..

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After a pause to regroup and rearm, the invaders plan to launch an offensive to the west to occupy territories from Moldova to the western part of Belarus.

A small western part was supposed to remain from Ukraine, where, according to Putin, “incorrigible neo-Nazi Russophobes lived”.

CIA director William Barnes, who was a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow and had more contact with Putin than anyone else in the Biden administration, described the Russian autocrat as " Control over it has become synonymous with Putin's concept of Russian identity and authority.. Given the details of the military plans, as well as Putin's belief that Ukraine should be swallowed up by the "