![]() Even so, officials said, the FSB continued to feed the Kremlin rosy assessments that Ukraine’s masses would welcome the arrival of Russia’s military and the restoration of Moscow-friendly rule. Extensive polls conducted for the FSB show that large segments of Ukraine’s population were prepared to resist Russian encroachment, and that any expectation that Russian forces would be greeted as liberators was unfounded. There are records that add to the mystery of Russian miscalculations. Some complied and sabotaged Ukraine’s defenses, officials said, while others appear to have pocketed their FSB payments but balked at doing the Kremlin’s bidding when the fighting started. The files show that the FSB unit responsible for Ukraine surged in size in the months leading up to the war and was counting on support from a vast network of paid agents in Ukraine’s security apparatus. Ukraine’s security services have an interest in discrediting Russia’s spy agencies, but key details from the trove were corroborated by officials in Western governments. “Russia’s mistake was really fundamental and strategic.” “They set up an entire war effort to seize strategic objectives that were beyond their means,” the official said. ![]() official with regular access to classified intelligence on Russia and its security services. “The Russians were wrong by a mile,” said a senior U.S. But in some ways, these have been even more incomprehensible and consequential, officials said, underpinning nearly every Kremlin war decision. The humiliations of Russia’s military have largely overshadowed the failures of the FSB and other intelligence agencies. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin. No aspect of the FSB’s intelligence mission outside Russia was more important than burrowing into all levels of Ukrainian society.Īnd yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hold on power. They offer rare insight into the activities of the FSB - a sprawling service that bears enormous responsibility for the failed Russian war plan and the hubris that propelled it.Īn agency whose domain includes internal security in Russia as well as espionage in the former Soviet states, the FSB has spent decades spying on Ukraine, attempting to co-opt its institutions, paying off officials and working to impede any perceived drift toward the West. ![]() The communications exposing these preparations are part of a larger trove of sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian and other security services and reviewed by The Washington Post. There is no indication that the recipient ever made it to the capital, as the FSB’s plans collapsed amid the retreat of Russian forces in the early months of the war. “Have a successful trip!” one FSB officer told another who was being sent to oversee the expected occupation, according to intercepted communications.
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