"Six days before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, a small group of western intelligence officers were briefing on the Russian military plan. On a quiet table, in an unfashionable chain restaurant in London, an astonishing strategy was recounted: a blitzkrieg to surround Kyiv and Ukraine’s other big cities, followed by a ‘kill list’ operation run by Russian FSB intelligence to eliminate Ukraine’s national and local leaders.Western intelligence was certain of the Kremlin’s intentions. But many of the Russian soldiers about to start the biggest war in Europe since the second world war had no clear idea what was to come. Bored troops, nominally on exercises in Khoyniki, Belarus, 30 miles north of Ukraine, were selling their diesel fuel in the week before the invasion and passing the time by drinking. ...”
On the Main Road. Retreat, escape… by the Russian painter Vasily Vereshchagin, depicts the startling defeat of Napoleon I in Russia in 1812.
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