Vladimir Putin not only thought that he would conquer Kiev in 3 days, but he was convinced that no one would stop him in this war. Russia assumed there would be no strong response to the invasion, either from the European Union or from NATO. In addition, she believed that some countries would even accept an attack on Poland and that NATO would disintegrate. What do the publicly disclosed FSB documents prove?
The documents of the Russian Federal Security Service, revealed yesterday by the British “The Sun”, say a lot about the state of consciousness of the Russian president. However, they did not come out of nowhere.
EU in the grip of Russian influence
It is worth recalling the reports on the activities of Russian secret services in the European Union in recent years. As early as 2016, the secret services of many countries warned the European Parliament that the level of Russian agents in their country was alarming. Decades of economic dependence on Germany and France exacerbated this problem. Despite the arms embargo imposed on Russia in 2014, little has changed. Regulatory loopholes have allowed equipment worth a total of €350 million to enter Russia from the European Union, 78 percent of which was supplied by Germany and France. Dependence on Russian raw materials also gave Russia a certain advantage. Not only was the Nord Stream gas pipeline not blocked, but the second branch was launched. The Kremlin was convinced that the hybrid warfare, especially the information warfare, which had been waged for years, had succeeded perfectly and gripped the European Union. Given the attitude of Germany and France at the start of the war and in the months that followed, it’s fair to say that Putin was not as wrong as we see today. Let us not only think of the countless telephone calls between Berlin/Paris and Moscow, but also of the votes in the European Parliament at the beginning of the war, in which even some members of the Polish opposition objected to the condemnation of cooperation with Putin by some EU politicians. Therefore, Putin’s plan must be seen in a broad context.
Putin’s daring plan
The documents released by the British daily come from a source within the FSB known as “Wind of Change”. That follows from them Putin hoped that after his troops’ lightning victory in Ukraine, which would take them three days to conquer, the West would descend into terror, eventually leading to the collapse of NATO. An ultimatum would be sent to the West: accept the occupation of Ukraine and declare a no-fly zone over Poland and the Baltic States. According to the Russian scenario, the “nuclear triad” would be activated, i.e. nuclear weapons fired from land, air and submarines, leading to “withdrawal of several countries from NATO” and possibly from the European Union, and as a result to the “disengagement of several countries from NATO” fundamental collapse of the West”. Putin assumed that the terrified Western countries would send “separate appeals to Russia assuring them that they would not take any aggressive actions against Russia and would not be participants in a possible war”.
The strength of Russia in terms of position (negotiated) will be comparable to that of the USSR. This will allow Russia to take political control of a number of countries that were part of the USSR in the future. NATO as an integral structure will cease to exist
Wind of Change reveals. He adds that according to Putin’s assumptions, some countries would even be ready to accept missile strikes against Poland and the Baltic States.
The great fiasco of demonic pride
Nothing in Putin’s plan failed! Russia thought it had the West in its grip. And probably these assumptions would have had a chance to come true eight years ago, when Donald Tusk’s party was in power. We remember very well what relations with Russia were like at the time. The subordination of Poland to Moscow was nothing short of shocking. A few examples: gas contracts on Kremlin terms, the Smolensk investigation on Moscow terms, passivity in the 2014 Ukraine peace negotiations, and Radosław Sikorski threatening: if you don’t sign the deal, you all die. The PO-PSL government didn’t even have the bare minimum imagination to foresee the threat. He cut defense spending, liquidated border guards, military units, military resources, and when Russian military maneuvers predicted the scenario of a “nuclear attack on Warsaw”, General Koziej mocked those who sounded the alarm about the danger. The dependence on Germany was similar. Tusk’s party was not even able to oppose such decisions by the European Parliament, which clearly hit Polish raison d’état. So how could it take decisive steps in the name of a fighting Ukraine?
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Putin missed. His plan turned out to be unrealistic. But not because he was completely out of touch with reality. It was a mistake to assume that no one would want to stand up for Ukraine. He had not foreseen that the President of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Government would stand up so clearly for our eastern neighbour. He did not foresee that Poland would decipher the actions of the hybrid war, that it would be impossible to allow the “Lock” operation on the border with Belarus, that it would definitively focus on armaments and closer cooperation with the NATO, that it would take on the burden of representing Ukraine around the world and force Western countries to join the aid and stigmatize Russia. He had not foreseen that we would not become involved in a series of provocations launched after the outbreak of war. He did not expect Ukraine to fight so bravely and receive military support from the world. He hadn’t imagined that the United States would put so much effort into helping Ukraine, strengthening NATO’s eastern flank and noting that Poland, not Germany, was a reliable partner in this part of Europe. The Kremlin dictator was wrong on many fronts, but he most stumbled on the courage of the Ukrainians and the brotherly steadfastness of Poland.
Source: wPolityce