February 24, local time, is the first anniversary of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The past year has been difficult, even painful, for both the Ukrainian and Russian people. Peaceful lives have been disrupted, with some forced to leave their homes, others precarious, and many others ending their young lives.
And just a day before the first anniversary, the British newspapers Daily Mail and The Sun published the same news, saying that according to "leaked FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) documents", Russian President Vladimir Putin obtained false intelligence before the conflict began, so much so that he believed that Russian troops could take Kiev in just three days.
According to the British media, citing the so-called leaked documents, Putin's intelligence officers told him that his army could easily drive out Vladimir Zelensky and his government, and the Ukrainian population would welcome Russian soldiers with open arms.
It is on the basis of such intelligence that the 70-year-old Putin is full of confidence, and when he was boosting the morale of his subordinates, he said things like "Kiev can be taken in three days." And not only Putin himself, according to sources, if Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had been asked a year ago, he would have had the same answer "we will take Kyiv in three days."
For Mark Galeotti, a British political scientist who specializes in Russian security, intelligence officers provide such information with a lot of subjective considerations: "They know Putin's deep-seated perception that he has been reluctant to treat Ukraine as a real country for years."
And along these lines, intelligence officers provide a lot of information that does not correspond to the facts, such as Zelensky's low support among Ukrainians, "about 2,000 trained civilians in each city are ready to oppose Zelensky", "about 40% of Ukrainians said they will not defend their country", and so on.
But as the conflict began, the messages quickly turned out to be false, and it became clear that the Ukrainians were going to stay the course, shutting their massive Russian army out of the city's gates and forcing their attention to focus on the east. Coupled with the one-sided support of Europe and the United States for Ukraine, the sending of weapons and funds has made the situation even more chaotic.
In addition to inaccurate intelligence, the Russians' outdated tactics and aging weaponry, and even bad weather, have adversely affected them. Originally, it was to fight a quick victory, but a few days later, the Russian side found that it was not like that at all, the elite paratroopers were annihilated, and the land forces that were the first to cross the Russian-Ukrainian border became a "death convoy", in a dilemma.
Overall, the so-called leaked report shows that the Kremlin has grossly underestimated Ukraine, preventing them from winning as expected. And now it seems that regardless of the final outcome, the winner is destined to not exist, and the losses on both sides are not small.
I hope that Russia and Ukraine can stop now, and those who add fuel to the fire and take advantage of the opportunity to profit will also stop as soon as possible, only when such a confrontation situation is over, the lives of the people of the two countries will gradually return to their original calm.