Ukrainians Have Intercepted An Important Message To Kadyrov From A Chechen Unit In Belarus
- 21.02.2026, 21:11
It was about "an offensive on Kiev".
Ukrainian border guards in the second week of February intercepted an important message from the commander of a Chechen unit stationed in Belarus to Ramzan Kadyrov. In it, the commander reported that his unit was already in place and would soon be in Kiev, writes The Guardian.
The signal, however, did not convince Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that a full-scale invasion was imminent. According to the publication's sources, the Ukrainian leader focused on the assessments of his closest adviser Andriy Yermak.
According to informed interlocutors, most of the high command, including the then AFU commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny, were only preparing scenarios for a possible attack, but without authorization from above, any large-scale troop movements remained on paper.
Yermak convinced the Ukrainian president that Russia's troop buildup was an element of hybrid pressure and would not escalate into a large-scale invasion. This position effectively halted the Ukrainian side's preventive response, although intelligence provided concrete threat signals.
"Yermak was one of the few Ukrainian officials in regular contact with Russian counterparts. He was in frequent contact with Putin's deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, as part of the long-running Donbass talks that had stalled. If Kozak helped convince Yermak that the panic over the US invasion was absurd, he probably thought so himself," the publication wrote.
Sources say that even in the Kremlin, most senior officials did not know the details of Putin's plans, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin speaker
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was foreseen - what is known
The same piece notes, that in November 2021, CIA Director William Burns traveled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had to settle for a phone call. U.S. intelligence agencies had received signals in previous weeks that Putin might be planning an invasion of Ukraine.
The publication shared that then-U.S. President Joe Biden sent Burns to warn the Kremlin chief of the disastrous economic and political consequences of such a move.
It is also noted that Zelensky called former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, asking him to call Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin and convince him to end the war.