National Defence Council Secretary explains "why Ukrainians were not warned about war coming": We could not allow panic

VALENTYNA ROMANENKO — WEDNESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2022, 13:53

Oleksii Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, insists that the Ukrainian authorities were preparing for a full-scale war with Russia, and were protecting the population from massive panic.

Source: Danilov in an interview with Wirtualna Polska, translation provided by the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Apparatus

Details: An interviewer asked the Secretary of the National Security Council why Ukrainian politicians calmed down the public against the backdrop of repeated warnings from American intelligence.

"Why didn't Ukrainians directly hear that a full-scale war was about to begin? Don't you think that many victims would have been avoided then?" asked the newspaper's journalists.

Quote from Danilov: "If we had not been preparing for war, we would not be sitting in this office today, and Russian tanks would be in Warsaw, Prague or Vilnius. We defend not only our land, but also the whole of Europe. This is sufficient proof that these preparations for war were underway.

Another thing is that we could not allow any panic. The first task of the Russians was to destabilise society. If mass panic broke out, no one would be able to handle it. All the casualties among the civilian population are on Putin's conscience, and no one is in a hurry to bring him to justice."

Background: 

In an August interview with the Washington Post, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the Ukrainian authorities were warned about the Russian invasion, but the partners did not provide any specific data. He also said that if the Ukrainians had been told about the possible war earlier, it would have led to a large-scale panic, and it would have been more difficult to defend the country.

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