Right about then we realized this is odd it was much bigger in scale and scope than the previous year’s exercise. Mark Milley, chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon : We’re out of Afghanistan by 31 August, and there was a planned Russian exercise called Zapad, and they started marshaling the troops for the exercise in the September time frame. secretary of State: The storm clouds were starting to gather many months before the invasion.Īvril Haines: Then we were starting to see this new buildup.ĭame Karen Pierce, British ambassador to the U.S., Washington: Something was badly wrong. , but a healthy amount of the discussion behind closed doors was about Ukraine.Īntony Blinken, U.S. When President Biden met with President Putin in Geneva, obviously the top story around that visit was the ransomware attacks and cyber Jake Sullivan: Part of the motivating impulse for making the proposal for the summit in Geneva was to try to create an alternative path that would involve Russia deescalating around Ukraine and us trying to inject some stability - not just into the U.S.-Russia relationship, but stability into the broader Ukraine situation. intelligence community really knows when Russia conducts exercises, and it was an exercise. Why do we know it was an exercise? Because the U.S. Cyber Command: We knew they weren’t going to invade in April 2021. Paul Nakasone, director, National Security Agency, and commander, U.S. Jon Finer: For obvious reasons, given the history of 2014, given the conflict that had been going on ever since, it raised real concerns about their intention. There was no other credible explanation for what they were up to. Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, White House: That was deeply alarming, because it was out of historical norms. At that point, the only military action that seemed plausible was a much smaller incursion. Putin is clearly considering military action on some level. There was definitely a moment where I recognized that this is not just a force buildup for diplomatic effect. Jon Finer, deputy national security adviser, National Security Council, White House: In the spring of 2021, we started to see a concerning buildup of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine.Īvril Haines, director of National Intelligence: In that April-March period, I’d seen it build up. The national defense strategy said, “Hey, the pacing threat is China, but Russia is this acute threat out there.” I always had that in the back of my mind - Russia is potentially very, very dangerous. I’ve been thinking about the Russians for a very long time. Scott Berrier, director, Defense Intelligence Agency: DIA is supposed to be the master sense-makers of militaries around the world - how they’re organized, trained, equipped, where they are, why they fight, when they would fight, what their doctrine is and what their leaders are all about.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |