Overreach, page 22
Putin had made his official message clear in the characteristically direct and universally comprehensible way he had communicated for two decades – the language of boss–subordinate relations. At its most superficial, he had signalled that recognition of the Donbas republics was right and proper, in the collective and unanimous opinion of Russia’s top public statesmen. Subconsciously, but with equal clarity, he had also denoted who was in the inner circle, who was in the chorus, who was on the edges. And most of all, who was the ultimate boss.
But Putin had also signalled something far more profound, something that would ultimately be far more significant for the coming conflict. The most deluded and the most ideologically driven members of Putin’s entourage were on the inside, while those with the most detailed and forensic real-world knowledge were on the outside. Like King Lear, indeed, Putin showed in his Security Council meeting that he was interested not in debate but in ritual public displays of approval. Dissent – such as Shoigu’s misgivings about the wisdom of annexing Crimea in 2014 – was no longer conceivable. There could be no clearer indication that the nature and power dynamics of Putin’s court had changed. As had Putin himself. He had become the leader of a nation about to launch a great patriotic war.
CHAPTER 7
Cry Havoc
No military plan survives its first contact with the enemy.
Carl von Clausewitz, On War
Kyiv
Just before 6 a.m. Moscow time – five in the morning in Kyiv – a pre-recorded message from Vladimir Putin was broadcast on all Russian state TV channels. He announced the launch of a ‘special military operation’ in eastern Ukraine in order to achieve the ‘demilitarisation and denazification’ of the country. Putin assured viewers that Russia had ‘no plans’ to occupy Ukrainian territory and that he ‘supported the right of the peoples of Ukraine to self-determination’.1 Minutes later, the skies above Kyiv, Kharkiv and a dozen other major Ukrainian cities lit up with the tail-flames of Kalibr and Kinzhal cruise missiles and incoming artillery. The ‘shock and awe’ blitzkrieg that General Mark Milley had predicted the previous October had begun – and as he had also predicted, the spearhead of the assault was an armed coup against the government in Kyiv.
In his top-floor apartment in Kyiv’s fashionable Podol district artist Ilya Chichkan heard the sirens and went out onto his balcony. From the direction of Hostomel airport to the west of the city, he saw ‘the biggest fireworks display I have ever seen … it was like a Hollywood film,’ he recalled. ‘It was hard to believe that it was really happening in front of my eyes. I thought, God damn. That crazy bastard’s gone and done it.’2
Fifteen kilometres south of Kyiv in the presidential residence in Koncha-Zaspa, Volodymyr Zelensky had been awoken with the news of Russian mobilisation at half past four. When the bombardment began he and his wife Olena went to wake their children Oleksandra, 17, and Kirilo, 9. ‘It was loud,’ recalled Zelensky. ‘There were explosions’ as Russian rockets poured into Hostomel, to the northeast of the residence.3 Olena and the children hurriedly crossed the gravel drive in front of the nineteenth-century merchant’s mansion and hustled into cars to be evacuated to a more secure location in western Ukraine. A week later, a piece of Russian rocket would land just outside the front door of the residence (‘Missed!’ tweeted press secretary Sergii Nykyforov with the defiant humour that would become the trademark of Zelensky’s government communications). For the first weeks of the war, Zelensky would speak only by phone to his wife and children, according to adviser Serhiy Leshchenko.4
Zelensky, in his usual work clothes of a white shirt and blue suit, was driven in a heavily guarded convoy to the closed street of government buildings in the heart of Kyiv known as the Triangle or ‘Bankova’, after the street’s pre-revolutionary name. Over the previous few days and weeks the Triangle had been haphazardly fortified with roadblocks of ‘hedgehog’ tank traps and hastily constructed concrete pillboxes protecting the approaches. Inside the gaudily decorated presidential administration itself, sandbags had been piled up inside and outside all the doors and windows and offices hastily converted into dormitories for staffers and guards. Heavy desks and filing cabinets were used to block internal doors – makeshift fortifications that would remain in place for months. Zelensky and his top military and civilian officials convened in a more secure, if also more claustrophobic, venue in a Soviet-era bunker deep underground, a vast complex that included tunnels linking it to the Kyiv metro system at Arsenalnaya Station. Ordinary Kyiv residents followed suit, descending into a network of over 500 large bomb shelters and 6,000 reinforced basements constructed during the Cold War and refurbished by the city authorities after the annexation of Crimea.5
One of the first official calls Zelensky took was from President Biden, who offered full support – while other US officials offered to evacuate him and his family from Kyiv. The next day the Associated Press quoted a senior US intelligence official as saying that Zelensky’s response had been, ‘The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.’6 Aides who were with him at the time are doubtful that he actually uttered this exact phrase, but it certainly reflected two vital things about the first, chaotic hours of the war – Zelensky’s upbeat defiance, and a conviction among NATO allies that Kyiv would soon fall to the Russian onslaught. Germany’s Finance Minister Christian Lindner even initially rebuffed Zelensky’s urgent appeals for aid and weapons, telling him ‘you only have a few hours’ before Kyiv fell, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin.7
Despite the apparent defeatism of Ukraine’s closest allies, the Ukrainian president ‘was calm, calmer than the rest of us’, recalled an adviser. ‘He was in no doubt that his place was with his people, in his capital.’ The adviser had hurried on foot to the Triangle in the early morning of 24 February with just a satchel containing his personal laptop and chargers, but no change of clothes. He would remain at the office, sleeping in makeshift dormitories alongside bodyguards, for three weeks.8
After his call with Biden, Zelensky hurriedly recorded a video address to his people on his smartphone. ‘Good morning, Ukrainians, this morning President Putin announced a special military operation in Donbas,’ he said. ‘We are working. The army is working. Don’t panic. We are strong. We are ready for everything. We will defeat everyone. Because we are Ukraine.’ Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelensky addressed the Russian people directly. ‘The people of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine want peace,’ he said. ‘But if we come under attack … you will see our faces, not our backs.’
By mid-morning, still clean-shaven and wearing a dark jacket and white shirt, Zelensky made a more formal address from an official lectern in the Presidential Palace – this time aimed at an international audience. ‘Russia has attacked Ukraine in a cowardly and suicidal way, just as Nazi Germany did,’ he said. ‘What is being decided is not only our country’s future, but also how Europe will live in the future.’ Zelensky ordered a general mobilisation of all Ukrainian males between 18 and 60 years old, who were also banned from leaving the country.9 Within two days Kyiv’s Territorial Defence Forces had so many volunteers that they were turning people away.10 Civil defence units began distributing weapons to all able-bodied men in the courtyards of apartment buildings all over Kyiv, eventually handing out 18,000 guns and hundreds of thousands of Molotov cocktails.11 Two artist friends of Ilya Chichkan’s wandered out of an all-night party at his studio – and returned with a Kalashnikov and a heavy-calibre pistol.12
From before dawn on the war’s first day, according to a source on the Zelensky team with direct knowledge of the events, the presidential security team had been reinforced by several ‘foreign’ advisers that included at least three senior US intelligence officials.13 Zelensky and his top advisers were given secure satellite-based mobile phones provided by the Americans to make their movements less trackable. Zelensky also changed out of his dark blue suit and put on an olive-green Ukrainian army fleece top without insignia, army fatigue trousers and boots. The trademark informal war-leader look that would characterise Zelensky’s future addresses to the nation – as well as to the European and British parliaments, the US Congress, the Cannes Film Festival and dozens of other video appeals to the world – was born.
‘People say the look was made up by stylists or PR people. It was not,’ said the adviser. ‘It was Volodymyr Oleksandrovych [Zelensky’s] own personal decision, his alone. He wanted to show solidarity with the ordinary Ukrainians who were defending their country. Everyone had become a soldier overnight – including the president.’14 By the time I met Zelensky in Kyiv in July he cut a profoundly impressive figure – hard-eyed, emphatic in his speech, his trademark boyish grin long gone.
On the evening of 25 February – the second day of the war – Zelensky appeared on television in his new military look, unshaven and grim-faced. ‘What do we hear today? It’s not just rocket explosions, combat and the roar of aircraft,’ said Zelensky, his manner transformed into something strikingly harder and more commanding that his pre-war, nice-guy persona. ‘This is the sound of a new iron curtain lowering and closing Russia off from the civilised world. Our task is for that new iron curtain not to fall on Ukraine.’
In truth, Zelensky’s defiance in the first days of the invasion was based on little more than bravado. Ukrainian forces were for the most part being badly beaten on the ground as the Russian steamroller gathered pace. In the south – as we will look at later in more detail – Russian units poured from Crimea almost unopposed, reaching and taking the strategic dam on the Dniepr at Nova Kakhovka in a matter of hours. Kyiv and central Ukraine were now cut off from river access to the Black Sea. Other forces were pressing east towards Mariupol in a bid to link Crimea to the Donbas republics. Massive columns of Russian armour were moving from the Russian border to surround Kyiv from two sides – exactly as the CIA’s Russian informants had predicted – and the Kremlin’s forces were already in the suburbs of the northeastern border cities of Kharkiv and Sumy. To the east, satellites showed Russians setting up field hospitals, resupply bases for artillery and rocket launchers – as well as vast columns of trucks loading at all available railheads.15 Only the Ukrainian forces directly opposite Donetsk, firmly dug in since 2014, held the line – though the Russians quickly broke over the line of control in northern Donbas around Luhansk.
Most ominously of all, a lightning airborne assault on Hostomel airport on the outskirts of Kyiv had succeeded in capturing the strategic airport. Russian special forces in airborne-landed armoured vehicles were moving through the western suburbs of the capital, with firefights breaking out on Victory Prospekt, within four kilometres of the Triangle government compound downtown. Ukrainian forces dynamited two key bridges into Kyiv, enabling them to focus on defending a smaller number of choke-points. Ukrainian sappers also destroyed all connections between the Russian and Ukrainian rail networks in Kharkiv and Sumy provinces to prevent the invading force from ramping up their supply lines.
Amid the unfolding disaster, there were a few small hopeful signs. Russian troops who believed they would be met with flowers and smiles by the liberated local population were quickly disabused. Ukrainian social media in the first days of the war was filled with clips of civilians – some apparently insanely brave, others drunk, almost all Russian-speaking – roundly abusing Russian soldiers and telling them in no uncertain terms to fuck off home. A unit of Ukrainian marines became early national heroes for their radio message from their tiny garrison on Snake Island near Odesa to the heavy missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which had ordered them to surrender. ‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself!’ they signalled defiantly, before being shelled and then captured. Within days, destinations on motorway road signs around Ukraine had been replaced with the words – spelled out in official municipal-issue transfer-lettering – ‘Na Khui’, or ‘Fuck Yourselves’.
Meanwhile, with the Russian military relying nearly entirely on unsecured analogue radio communications, amateur radio enthusiasts and hacktivist organisations like Anonymous quickly managed to block and surveil enemy radio frequencies. Aviarazvetka, a group of amateur drone enthusiasts who had volunteered for the Ukrainian army, unleashed a deadly swarm of small commercial drones to track advancing Russian armour. And most importantly, three key weapons that would prove unexpectedly decisive made their battlefield debut: Ukraine’s 142-strong fleet of missile-armed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB-2 drones, British–Swedish NLAW and US-made Javelin shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles.
On the third day of the invasion, as intense fighting raged in the western suburbs of Kyiv, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin claimed on his Telegram channel that ‘Zelensky hastily fled Kiev. He was already not in the Ukrainian capital yesterday. He fled to Lvov with his entourage … [and is] currently under protection of neo-Nazis.’16
That evening – Saturday 26 February – Zelensky filmed himself and his closest aides, all dressed in military fatigues, exiting the doors of the Presidential Administration on Bankova Street and walking down the road, accompanied by a handful of bodyguards in tactical gear. The location – just 50 metres above the Khreschatyk Boulevard in central Kyiv – was unmistakable. ‘Good evening, everyone,’ Zelensky said. ‘I want everyone to know that we are still in the capital, in our home. The leader of the presidential party is here. The head of the presidential office is here. Prime Minister [Denys] Shmyhal is here. [Mykhailo] Podolyak [adviser to the head of the presidential office] is here. The president is here. We are all here. Our soldiers are here. Citizens are here. We are all here protecting our independence and our country, and it will stay like that. Glory to the heroes, glory to Ukraine.’17
The stroll through downtown Kyiv was a calculated risk. Earlier that afternoon, Kyiv authorities had declared a strict 36-hour curfew in order to sweep the city for Russian saboteurs, warning civilians that they would be seen as Kremlin agents and risked being ‘liquidated’ if they stepped outside. Zelensky’s security team had received intelligence that no fewer than three teams of Russian assassins deployed to Kyiv were hunting him.
The 400 Wagner mercenaries – most of them Russian special forces veterans – who had been covertly deployed to Kyiv in January had been issued with a list of key assassination targets that included Zelensky, the prime minister, the cabinet, the Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir, both former world heavyweight boxing champions. The Wagner teams, promised high bounties for every kill, had spent the previous six weeks tracking the movements of their targets via their mobile-phone signals, a source close to Wagner told the British journalist Manveen Rana, who had cultivated contacts among the group’s members in North and Central Africa.18
The Wagner men’s orders were to wait until uniformed Spetsnaz – Russian special forces – teams reached the city to secure a corridor out of Kyiv once their targets had been assassinated. The mercenaries had also been told that Putin wanted to hold off on the killings to show that he was negotiating with Zelensky. Indeed Zelensky agreed on Sunday 27 February to send a delegation to meet a Russian team at the Belarus border – but expressed scepticism about Moscow’s seriousness.
Wagner commanders assured their men in Kyiv that no deal would be reached and that the effort would be simply ‘smoke and mirrors’, a source close to senior members of the Wagner Group told Rana. But as the planned assault on Kyiv ground to a halt in the northern and western suburbs, the mercenaries came under fierce pressure from Moscow to bring forward their operations to secure a visible victory. Ukrainian intelligence would later report that the Wagner teams attempted to assassinate Zelensky on at least two occasions, only to be ambushed and killed. According to Rana’s source the Wagner men on the ground were ‘alarmed’ by how accurately the Ukrainians had anticipated their moves, calling the intelligence of Zelensky’s security team ‘eerie’ in its accuracy.
In addition to the Wagner killers – and unbeknown to them – a separate group of Chechen assassins were also on the hunt for Zelensky. Hours after Zelensky’s walkabout, Ukrainian special forces ‘eliminated’ a group of Chechens on the outskirts of Kyiv before they could reach the president. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, told Ukrainian TV channels that the tip-off on their whereabouts came from inside Russian intelligence. ‘I can say that we have received information from the FSB, who do not want to take part in this bloody war,’ Danilov said. ‘And thanks to this, the elite [Chechen] group which came here to eliminate our president was destroyed.’ According to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry the Chechen death squad had been riding around Kyiv in a hijacked ambulance and were ‘partly shot, partly detained’.19
Hostomel Airport, Kyiv
In the opening hours of the war’s first day the Russian army’s priority was to cripple Ukraine’s military infrastructure – focusing on destroying air bases in an effort to quickly gain air superiority. Eleven military airports across the country were hit by Russian airstrikes on day one of the fighting, destroying a number of Ukrainian helicopters and airplanes on the ground. Ammunition dumps, too, were targeted. Fortunately, the Ukrainian army had moved to disperse its stores of artillery, weapons and aircraft as widely as possible in the days leading up to the invasion, partly neutralising the devastation of the first Russian airstrikes.
Russia’s single most important strategic target was Kyiv’s Hostomel airport. Gaining control of the airport and establishing an air bridge would allow a quick airborne assault on the capital, decapitating the government and allowing Putin to declare victory within days or even hours. From dawn on the 24th, Hostomel received a brutal pasting from Russian jets. At noon, a large force of Russian helicopters – including troop-carrying Mi-8 workhorses and Ka-52 attack choppers – made their first daring attempt to land at the airport.
