Several Ukrainian officials told The Guardian they believed President Zelensky was so adamant that a major invasion was unthinkable because he had been convinced of it by Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff and closest confidant.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing the investigation by journalist Shaun Walker, Yermak believed Russia operated in the grey, deniable zone of hybrid warfare and would never launch a dramatic invasion that would sever relations with the West irrevocably. Yermak declined an interview request for the story.
Yermak was one of the few Ukrainian officials to have regular contact with Russian counterparts. He spoke often to Putin's deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, as part of long-deadlocked negotiations over the Donbas region. If Kozak helped reassure Yermak that the US invasion scare was groundless, it was most likely because he believed so himself - the CIA estimated that only a handful of non-military officials knew about Putin's plans until very late.
Meanwhile, the prevailing mood in Kyiv was that the American warnings were exaggerated. Ukraine had been fighting Russian proxy forces in the Donbas for eight years, but the idea of a full-fledged war - with missile attacks, tank columns, and a march on Kyiv - seemed unimaginable. "The message was: 'Nothing is going to happen, it's all sabre-rattling,'" said a European intelligence official.
In November 2021, Zelensky even dispatched one of his most senior security officials on a top-secret mission to deliver a message to European leaders via intelligence channels: the war scare is fake, and is all about the US trying to exert pressure on Russia. Yermak has since left his position and faces legal scrutiny, while Zelensky now negotiates directly with the US on ending the war his inner circle once deemed impossible.
