We knew Russia would attack from Belarus, but we did not believe in assault from Crimea – Head of border guards

In February 2022, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine informed the country’s top leadership about Russia's preparations for a full-scale invasion.

Source: Serhii Deineko, Head of Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service, in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda

Quote: "We knew about the planned invasion. Of course, now there is a lot of information that ‘everyone knew’ and ‘everyone was preparing’. However, the Border Guard Service informed the top military leadership of the state. I reported to the president two weeks before the start of a full-scale invasion that there would be a war and that Russia would certainly attack the territory of Ukraine from the Republic of Belarus through the Chornobyl exclusion zone.

We had this information, and for a long time, we fully controlled some representatives of the military and political leadership of the Russian Federation. We had video materials and photos, and we knew the plan in detail. Therefore, it allowed us to prepare properly.

Two weeks before the start of the full-scale invasion, we completely evacuated all secret documentation of personal and housing files of our personnel from Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Lysychansk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Lutsk, Kyiv, Boryspil, Berdiansk, Odesa and Kherson…

I hesitated and thought about whether to evacuate this documentation from the Crimea front, because until the last moment, I did not believe that there could be an invasion from Crimea."

Details: According to Deineko, knowing Putin and his weakness for using "foreign flags" and miners, the border guards clearly understood that the invasion would be from the territory of Belarus, on the Chornobyl front.

The Russians were also expected on the border of Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts, where they planned to enter the territory of Ukraine to encircle and kill the Ukrainian group in the Joint Forces Operation area.

At the same time, Deineko says that the Armed Forces did not reach the border guards in time, just as they did not reach the border in 2014.

The head of the State Border Guard Service admits that until recently he did not expect an open invasion of the Russians from Crimea.

Deineko says that on 21 February, he informed all the highest authorities in writing that there would be a war. In his opinion, Russia postponed the date of a full-scale offensive (first it was 19, then 22 February and the last was 24 February), because it was waiting.

Quote: "The enemy was waiting. He was on high alert. We recorded that the servicemen of the Russian troops who were on the territory of Belarus for the so-called ‘exercises’ started calling their families and saying goodbye to them as early as 12 February.

We intercepted these conversations, and it was clear from their text and nature that the invasion was just a matter of days."

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