Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said she turned over in bed to find an empty space where her husband had been sleeping. Moscow had been left with “no other opportunity to protect Russia other than the one we will be forced to use today,” Putin said.Īs the speech finished, booms resounded across Kyiv. Seated at a wooden desk in a black suit and maroon tie, he appeared on television to announce what he called a “special operation” to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine. The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment.Īs the war began, Putin was some 475 miles away in Moscow. In the end, Russia wouldn’t take any territory inside Kyiv’s city limits, instead remaining stuck for weeks on the capital’s periphery before the retreat. Those fighting to save Kyiv also benefited greatly from key miscalculations by the Kremlin, which set in motion a plan to invade Kyiv based on poor assumptions about the mettle of the Ukraine military, the durability of the Zelenskyy government and the determination of the Ukrainian people to resist. In particular, the Irpin River, a waterway that marked the line of defense on Kyiv’s western edge, would help protect the capital when Ukrainian forces released dammed water to flood its banks. The defenders would also take advantage of terrain around the capital - dense forests, narrow roads, winding rivers - that favored their guerrilla tactics, as well as weather short of freezing that thawed the land and bogged down Russian vehicles. But what they did possess was a profound will to fight - one that would extend beyond soldiers to ordinary civilians and, most important, to the president himself. Ukraine forces lacked sufficient weaponry, ammunition and communications equipment. Commanders had moved personnel and equipment off bases, despite in many cases their own doubts about what was to come. and European political and military officials.Ī reconstruction of events shows that even as Ukraine’s political leadership had downplayed the likelihood of a full-scale invasion, the military had taken critical steps to withstand Russia’s initial assault. This account of how Ukraine forces defended, and saved, their capital is based on interviews with more than 100 people - from Zelenskyy and his advisers, to military commanders, to volunteer militiamen, as well as senior U.S. To the surprise of the world, the offensive against the Ukrainian capital would end in a humiliating retreat, which would expose deep systemic problems in a Russian military he had spent billions to rebuild.ĭespite the flaws that would emerge in Russia’s war planning, the outcome of the battle for Kyiv was far from predetermined. His assault on the city instantly reordered the security architecture of Europe against Moscow and isolated his nation to a degree unseen since the Cold War. Instead, what transpired in and around Kyiv in the ensuing 36 days would represent the biggest foreign blunder in the 22-year rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
#Russian missile commander almost launched nukes install
Moscow could install a puppet government. If the Russians could seize the seat of power in Ukraine, or at least cause the government to flee in panic, the defense of the country would quickly unravel.
The question everyone faced at that moment, Monastyrsky said, was: “How far can the enemy go with that enormous fist?”
0 kommentar(er)
