All the errors of intelligence (including Russian) on Ukraine
Francis Walsingham's article
Numerous analysts in the field of intelligence have pointed out the flaws of the Russian security services caused by various reasons.
First of all, the conflicts of a strategic nature between Valerij Vasil'evič Gerasimov, Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and the director of Russian military intelligence, Igor Kostyukov.
Second, the fact that the FSB, headed by Alexander Bortnikov, acted autonomously, using Spetsnaz special forces and Wagner mercenaries to unsuccessfully capture Volodymyr Zelensky. In short, there is currently a lack of coordination, of synergy between the various security services.
Thirdly, the analyzes made by the SVR (directed by Sergei Narychkin) on both the Ukrainian and European geopolitical context have proved wrong.
But the fallacy of the intelligence analyzes were also revealed towards German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz, since Russian intelligence did not expect that he would unconditionally join the anti-Russian alliance.
This error of assessment was also committed towards France but above all towards Italy, given the close ties with Russia in the oil sector. The SVR, in fact, expected very different political positions from the French and Italians.
As regards France, the NATO Response Force was mobilized very quickly: on 25 February to be exact. However, despite the readiness that up to now France has shown in the sector of the mobilization of the armed forces, there remains a serious problem and that is that most of the French armed forces operate in theaters very far from Europe, such as that of the Sahel .
But if Russian intelligence does not seem to have coordinated, however, errors of assessment have also been made by European intelligence: many in fact expected – even in France – that Russia would limit itself to carrying out attacks of a cyber nature and not that decided to invade Ukraine according to a traditional strategic approach.
If this has happened, it also depends on the fact that the DGSE has few men on the ground – that is, in Ukraine -, but above all on the fact that it does not have an autonomous interception of the situation since a considerable part of its information comes from collaboration with the CIA and with the British MI6.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/russia-errori-intelligence-ucraina/ on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 08:30:45 +0000.