Zelenskyy’s team has been preparing for war since 2019 – Danilov

OLENA ROSHCHINA – WEDNESDAY, 24 AUGUST 2022, 14:22

Oleksii Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (the RNBO), confirms that Ukraine has allegedly been preparing for the full-scale war since December 2019.

Source: Oleksii Danilov in an interview for the Polish newspaper Wyborcza

Quote: "It [the invasion] didn’t catch us by surprise. We knew for sure that it would happen sooner or later. We just didn’t expect Russians to attack from all sides. The attack from Belarus was a huge challenge for us, even though we prepared for this scenario as well (…).

In fact, we have been preparing for the war since December 2019. All the claims that we weren’t doing this are completely false. If we hadn’t been preparing for the war, today Russian tanks would be in Warsaw, Prague, Tallinn and Vilnius.

Europe today lives a different life because we were holding this invasion back, because we were destroying tens and hundreds of Russians".

Details: Danilov believes that it was the right decision not to inform the Ukrainian people about the impending war, and only the results to be achieved will allow for this decision to be properly assessed in due time.

"Today, after half a year of war, we see that the right scenario was chosen. Putin relied upon internal destabilisation, but we didn’t let that happen. It would be hard to imagine the consequences if we told Ukrainians: ‘you will be killed tomorrow’. Thus, we would have lost our country. And then Putin’s plans would have been fulfilled", Danilov explained.

"But we were preparing Ukrainian society [for that]. You saw the rise of patriotism in the middle of February", he added.

Danilov thinks that Russia expected Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, to flee the country, but he decided to stay in Kyiv in secure working conditions which had been prepared for him beforehand.

The Secretary of the Council also remarked that the Kremlin started its military aggression not in February 2014 [with the annexation of Crimea], but in August 2008 in Georgia.

Quote: "We believe that the Russian aggression started in August 2008 in Georgia. It was a brazen operation to occupy a part of Georgian territory. In 2008, Putin took off all his masks and claimed that he would take a military path to alter the borders of that country, established in 1991".

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