A top Ukrainian intelligence officer reveals why he never anticipated Russia to invade, why he fears Ukraine becoming the next Syria, and why he doesn’t believe the rumors about Putin’s mental health.

The president of Ukraine has been addressing the nation via video every evening since Russia invaded. On Wednesday evening, as the first month of war came to a close, he addressed the world in English. He was attempting to persuade them that “Russia is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe, of all people in the world,” and urged them to join in acts of protest and solidarity for Ukraine, regardless of where they live.

Zelenskyy knows that the world has a short attention span, and that after a month of intense fighting, with no end in sight, Ukraine’s problems may no longer be at the top of the world’s mind. But Zelenskyy is concerned about more than simply world opinion – and with it, the military and diplomatic backing that Ukraine has received from the West.

He must first persuade his own people, who are only now becoming accustomed to the thought that they are now facing the potential of a long battle that may last months, if not years, that they will continue to back him in the coming dark days.

The Ukrainian people have stunned everyone, including themselves, by banding together and defying the Russian army’s great superiority. However, once the first rush of combat triumph has worn off, continuing to do so will be considerably more difficult.

While Zelenskyy serves as the president, the war effort, military and intelligence services, civilian infrastructure, and economy are all managed by a team of people. In the early days of the war, there were fears that a Russian “decapitation operation” would try to eliminate Zelenskyy and as many of Ukraine’s top officials as possible, leaving the country without a leader. These preparations were thwarted, in part thanks to intelligence given forward ahead of time by Western intelligence services.

This group’s members are rarely found in the same room. They work independently from hidden places and communicate via encrypted video conference lines. One of them — a very senior intelligence official who cannot be named – met with reporters from three news organizations, earlier this week in a nondescript and vacant office building in a drab, residential section of Kyiv. He shared his thoughts on how the fight has gone so far, as well as his aspirations and fears for the future.

The senior official, like his boss Zelenskyy, had grown a military beard, but he preferred a cozy sweater to the president’s camouflage fatigues. He gave the image of a befuddled scholar throughout the conversation, however the urgency he felt often came through in mid-sentence.

His main concern, he stated at the outset of the conversation, is that “Putin is trying to turn Ukraine into Syria.”

He also brought it up again towards the end of the interview.

“I’m very afraid of a protracted war and I’m really afraid of a Syria scenario,” he said.

“I hope we will avoid it, but it’s only been 25 days.”

As long as Ukraine’s army and society have been able to keep up with the war so far, the man was very happy. He reminded us “Ukraine has a strong tradition of revolutions, a strong rebellious streak. Ukraine was born in a revolution of Cossacks in the 17th century.”

Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine isn’t a real country with its own history isn’t true, but it hasn’t been very good at keeping together as a political group either.

One of the reasons Ukraine’s intelligence agency was suspicious until the very last moment that war would break out, which it did on February 24, was because of tumultuous politics.

According to the senior source, “Putin so far has been extremely successful, and in Ukraine, within one year, one year and a half, he could achieve his goals. Without a war. I thought that one month ago. If he hadn’t started the war, it would have been possible for him to achieve his goals – at least to destabilize Ukraine. We were in an extremely dangerous and extremely controversial political landscape. The [approval] rating of Zelenskyy was 21 percent just before the war.”

Despite Ukraine’s Western friends providing it with intelligence regarding Putin’s war aims, which proved to be “precise” in hindsight, there were other reasons for doubt.

“We have been waiting for a crisis, some deep crisis. But to be honest, we didn’t see real preparations” on the Russian side, the official added.

Despite the fact that Russia had amassed a large number of soldiers and military equipment on Ukraine’s borders, the Ukrainians believed Putin was bluffing since instructions had not reached the tactical commanders of the Russian army.

“When you send military equipment, tanks, etc., and when you send soldiers, the military people – the commanders – need maybe two weeks to coordinate with each other. Even in the last days before the invasion, there were no tactical preparations. It’s impossible to push the war without this kind of preparation – and it’s the reason why they were so unsuccessful.”

In spite of how the Ukrainian army did, he said he was “a pessimist by nature.” This is despite how it looks like the Russians aren’t getting what they want.

“They are fully aware that the first step was unsuccessful,” he said. “But it’s normal for the Russian army. In the Finland war [the Winter War of 1939, when the Soviet Union invaded Finland], the first wave wasn’t successful and the second wave, after preparation, was successful.

“I would be very happy,” he added, if the military setback would also mark the beginning of the end for the Putin regime. “But I have to prepare for prolonged war. If it ends tomorrow, then that’s brilliant. But if not?”

The most crucial challenge for the Ukrainian leadership is psychologically preparing the country for a lengthy battle with failures and tragedies.

“This war is a natural disaster for the Russian army,” he remarked. “Moscow is disappointed,” but they can carry on. The Russian army will continue to fight until there is a rapid political upheaval in the form of a Kremlin palace coup.

“They will try to continue as long as they are able to,” even if it means depleting all of Russia’s remaining resources on the ground.

“They will try to encircle Kyiv, and in the south to capture Mykolaiv and Odessa – which so far wasn’t attacked because of a storm at sea [which made it difficult for the Russian Navy to land forces on the Black Sea coast]. They will act upon Soviet doctrine and launch another wave of 10 to 15 days.”

The Russians will also attempt to coerce the Belarusian army into joining the fight as reinforcements, as well as bringing mercenaries from war-torn countries in which Russia is involved, like Syria, Libya, and Mali.

This is why, despite his praise for mediators’ efforts to reach a truce between the warring parties, he doesn’t believe they have a good chance of succeeding.

“I’m very pessimistic about the negotiations,” the official added. “But we’re working. It’s a chance and we continue to work with these negotiations. We are working on them because there’s a chance, and we will continue trying,” despite the Russians dispatching second-tier representatives to the talks.

“We’re ready to talk about neutrality. About Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk. But they want” to make “claims for sovereignty of other regions. They tried to organize now a Kherson’s People Republic,” he added, alluding to the sole major Ukrainian city Russia has occupied so far, in the east, where the predominantly Russian-speaking population has been protesting against the Russian occupiers on a daily basis.

Russia has detained the mayor of the city and replaced him with a collaborator, prompting the Ukrainian government to assume that the next move would be to call a referendum similar to the one held in Crimea in 2014, which opened the way for its annexation.

“The Russians thought they would have many collaborators, but found very few. For them that was very surprising. We achieved this – that it was a very small number. We were afraid, but it didn’t happen.”

The Ukrainian security services have been attempting to uncover and uproot pro-Russian units since the initial invasion in 2014, while a senior official highlighted that “Russia’s idiotic behavior” was a big role in the lack of collaborators.

This echoed recent interviews with residents of Russian-speaking cities such as Odessa and Mykolaiv, who stated that, despite their historic and cultural Russian identity, they are not interested in being a part of Putin’s Russia, which has become an authoritarian regime and waged a destructive war against its neighbor. They would much rather be a part of a democratic, Western-leaning Ukraine in the current environment.

The senior members of Zelenskyy’s team, in their late forties and fifties, were educated in the Soviet Union and are familiar with Moscow’s mentality. They, on the other hand, chose to create a new Ukrainian society. Perhaps this is the key to the last month’s happenings. While Putin is attempting to pull his country back into the past – with its unrealistic, czarist, imperial goal – and is incapable of understanding his rivals, the Ukrainian leadership is well-versed in the old Russia and has chosen a different road to the future.

Although the top intelligence official believed Putin would avoid conflict, he refused to accept the premise that he is no longer in his right mind.

“I still think he is not mad,” he said. “He is rational, but he has extremely bad information and he is a prisoner of his strange ideas. He spent two years in a bunker,” due to his fears of being infected with COVID-19.

The official refused to confirm or deny recent Russian reports that senior officials in the FSB – Russia’s internal security and intelligence agency, which is also in charge of assessing Ukraine – had been fired and placed under house arrest for providing the Kremlin with false information prior to the war. He did, however, remark the reports are “highly likely.”

Nonetheless, he was hesitant to forecast Ukraine’s future. During the previous three decades of political upheaval, he, like every other civil servant in Kyiv, has been disillusioned numerous times as he witnessed how rampant corruption ate away at successive governments.

“The situation is bad. The old Ukraine is dying and our political scene has changed dramatically. Not everyone understands that. The new Ukraine is now being defined,” he summed up. “It will be a very, very different country, and it will absolutely depend on what happens on the battlefield. I am very afraid of a protracted war.”

Image Credit: Getty

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