In November 2021, CIA director William Burns sought to warn Vladimir Putin against invading Ukraine, but the Russian president refused to engage, instead complaining about an American warship near the Black Sea. Burns later told President Joe Biden that he believed Putin would indeed invade, according to a new account based on interviews with over 100 intelligence and diplomatic insiders.
The US and British intelligence services had gathered detailed evidence of Russia’s war plans, but their warnings were met with scepticism across Europe and by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Many European services, still wary after the faulty intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, dismissed the possibility of a full-scale conflict in the 21st century.
Zelenskyy himself spent months disregarding American warnings as scaremongering, and even quashed last-minute preparations by his own military and intelligence chiefs. “The political leadership just refused to accept it until right at the end,” a US intelligence official said.
Despite the intelligence success in predicting the invasion, both the CIA and MI6 failed to foresee the outcome, assuming a swift Russian victory. The invasion began on 24 February 2022, marking the most serious breach of European security since the Second World War.
