In November 2021, CIA director William Burns travelled to Moscow to warn Vladimir Putin against invading Ukraine, but the Russian president dismissed the threat and instead complained about a US warship. Burns later told President Joe Biden he believed Putin would indeed order an invasion – a prediction that proved correct three and a half months later.
The story of how US and British intelligence gained detailed insight into the Kremlin's war plans, and why much of Europe refused to believe them, has been revealed in interviews with more than 100 insiders from multiple countries. While the CIA and MI6 correctly predicted the invasion, they failed to foresee Ukraine's resistance, assuming a swift Russian victory.
European intelligence services, scarred by the faulty Iraq war intelligence, dismissed the warnings as fantastical. Most crucially, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spent months rejecting American alerts as scaremongering, only accepting the threat at the last minute. His own intelligence and military leaders made limited preparations behind his back.
As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches, the episode offers lessons on intelligence collection and analysis. The failure to convince allies highlights the lingering impact of past misjudgments and the challenge of believing the unthinkable in modern Europe.
