All gone horribly wrong: FT learns how Putin was preparing to invade Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared the invasion of Ukraine secretly from the leadership of the Kremlin and caused dissatisfaction among the elites with military aggression.

Source: Financial Times

Quote: "The Kremlin's senior leadership all found out about the invasion only when they saw Putin declare a 'special military operation' [that is what Russia calls their war against Ukraine – ed.] on television that morning."

Details: Later that day, oligarchs gathered at the Kremlin. "Everyone was completely losing it," says a person who attended the event.

One of the oligarchs asked Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov how Putin could have planned such an enormous invasion in such a tiny circle – so much so that most of the senior officials at the Kremlin, Russia's economic cabinet and its business elite had not believed it was even possible. "He has three advisers," Lavrov replied. "Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great."

"Under Putin's invasion plan, Russia's troops were to seize Kyiv within a matter of days in a brilliant, comparatively bloodless blitzkrieg. Instead, the war has proved to be a quagmire of historic proportions for Russia," FT states. 

Even as the huge cost of the invasion to Russia becomes apparent to him, Putin is more determined than ever to see it through, people who know him say. "The idea was never for hundreds of thousands of people to die. It’s all gone horribly wrong," a former senior Russian official says.

Putin is searching for new rationales to justify the war effort, insisting he had no choice but to pursue the invasion by any means necessary, current and former officials say. "He tells people close to him, ‘It turns out we were completely unprepared. The army is a mess. Our industry is a mess. But it's good that we found out about it this way, rather than when Nato invades us'," the former official adds.

The people who know Putin describe a leader who has become even more isolated since the start of the war. "Stalin was a villain, but a good manager, because he couldn’t be lied to. But nobody can tell Putin the truth," says one. "People who don't trust anyone start trusting a very small number of people who lie to them."

Putin's isolation deepened when the Covid-19 pandemic began. During the height of the pandemic, Putin was largely cut off from comparatively liberal, western-minded confidants who had previously had his ear. Instead he spent the first few months in his residence at Valdai, a bucolic town on a lake in northern Russia, essentially on lockdown with Yuri  Kovalchuk [a banker and media mogul who the US says manages Putin's personal finances – ed.], who inspired Putin to think of his historic mission to assert Russia's greatness, much as Peter the Great had.

But as Putin began drawing up plans for a possible invasion, Medvedchuk [a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician whose daughter's godfather is Russian President Vladimir Putin – ed.] insisted that Ukrainians would greet Russia’s forces with open arms.

One part of the plan involved Viktor Yanukovych, a former [Ukrainian – ed.] president who has been in Russian exile since fleeing the 2014 revolution against him. He was to deliver a video message conferring legitimacy on Medvedchuk – and anointing him to rule Ukraine with Russia's backing.

As the war continues to sputter, the scale of Russia’s miscalculation has begun to dawn on Putin, prompting him to seek out more information from people at lower levels, people who know him say.

On occasion, Putin has used information from his informal channels to trip up senior officials in public.

Putin's newfound scepticism, however, is limited by his unwillingness to admit the invasion was a mistake in the first place, the FT's sources say. Some of the liberal officials who oppose the war have attempted to convince him to end it by pointing out the economic damage the sanctions are likely to wreak on Russia's economy.

But Putin tells them "he has already factored in the discounts", another former senior Russian official says. "He says, 'We pay a huge price, I get it. We underestimated how difficult it could be.' 

But how can you convince a crazy man? His brain will collapse if he realises it was a mistake," the source sums up.

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