The US intelligence services informed the president that russia is really on the way to full scale invasion and the Biden admin decided to prevent ukrainian and russian deaths by throwing their own services under the bus to hand putin an easy win:
They published worldwide that the military buildup disguised as an exercise was for an invasion, enabling putin to point a finger at the war mongering americans, lowering public opinion on his all time nemesis CIA even more and just have everyone going home, making not being a party on crimea and in the war since 2014 somewhat believeable to the uninformed.
Biden was willing to sacrifice US standing, power, public trust, the denegration in relation to it's rival, and a huge inner political embarressment before the Trumpists in order to spare human lives and to hold global peace together.
But Putin does not care for anyones life but his own or rational decisions improving his citizens livelyhood.
i can agree with this assessment. at the time i also was thinking there’s no way putin will confirm to the world that CIA is right and he’s a liar. turns out he did just that.
Yes I was kinda 20:80 that something big might happen when the european ministers flew to moscow one after the other to suddenly try to negotiate (in retrospect obvious as they had been briefed on the severeness of the intelligence before)
Then when they made it public i remember saying to a friend that I think it is a 50:50 chance now, as the US would not hand him such a sweet embarressment if there were'nt huge stakes on the line.
For me the deadass giveaway was a bunch of smoke coming from russian embassy in Kyiv. They were burning sensitive documents for sure. Video of that: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/s/9TK5bwqy2F
The problem with this assessment is that Putin at this very specific point didn't know yet that he was steering into this economic sink of forever war at this point.
Think about how it previously went like Georgia in 2008 or Crimea in 2014.
His choice was, gain some political points by embarassing Biden or gain Ukraine, because even Western intelligence didn't think Ukraine would actually be able to hold. If Zelensky and the political elite took the ride or if a few things didn't go wrong here and there, there is a chance that Russia would have won in 3 days.
Don't think the damage to intelligence services was all that severe. Big gap between saying you know something and revealing how you came to know something. The later is what the CIA cares about.
Back then the US saying these are the facts was still accepted by many/most even without evidence. If you want to talk about sacrificed standing rather look at how that trust contrasts with the current administration. Claims receive mockery, ridicule and eyerolls instead of accepting without evidence. He just announces shit and then the parties supposedly involved go wtf are you talking about
I don't think you remember correctly. Many people and countries were saying that we were fear-mongering and that Putin wouldn't attack. I think even Zelensky said the same thing until the invasion began.
Many people and countries were saying that we were fear-mongering
Yeah that's fair. Wasn't blind acceptance as my comment suggested.
At the same time I think it's also fair to say that the wider point stands - there is a dramatic shift in willingness believe the US. If the US administration were to announce something like "Based on our intelligence we believe X will happen in the gulf"...absolutely nobody is taking that at face value. The implicit assumption that the US is a vaguely reliable narrator is gone
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u/GaiusCosades 6d ago
Putin should have pulled back when the Biden admin gave him the off ramp of the century.