Some are looking back at weeks before invasion and asking if more could have been done
began in the early hours of 24 February, with mass missile strikes and the advance of a land force from several directions, many key Ukrainian officials were apparently caught by surprise. Some were fast asleep.
It is possible it would not have made a difference anyway, but as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reaches thesome are starting to look back at the period in the buildup to the war and ask if more could have been done. “We don’t want to initiate an investigation for a while, but we cannot avoid it in the future,” said Volodymyr Ariev, an MP with the European Solidarity party of the former president Petro Poroshenko. He said his party had been pushing for weeks in the run-up to the invasion for the government to take the threat of war more seriously.
Many people were reassured by the calming messaging coming from senior Ukrainian officials. In late January Zelenskiy called the frequent US warnings of possible war a “mistake”. On 6 February his adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the chances of resolving the crisis through negotiations were “substantially higher” than the threat of attack.
Soon after, the remaining US diplomats in Kyiv were evacuated to Lviv. “It isn’t just time to leave Ukraine,,” a senior US administration official said. Several other embassies followed the Americans west. When the invasion did come, Zelenskiy and his team ignored offers from western countries to evacuate, and provided spirited leadership that helped kickstart the fierce Ukrainian defence efforts.
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