American Journalist Reveals Secret US-Russia Talks Before War

9.10.2024, 12:52
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There was a “hot 50-minute call” between Biden and Putin.

The United States was able to gather sufficiently convincing data about the upcoming Russian invasion of Ukraine thanks to sources in the highest echelons of Russian power. This is what Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, who became famous for his investigation of the Watergate scandal, writes in his new book, War.

In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion, the US had obtained a treasure trove of intelligence, which showed “conclusively” in October 2021 that Putin had plans to invade Ukraine with 175,000 troops, CNN, which has reviewed the upcoming book, reports. “It was an astonishing intelligence coup from the crown jewels of US intelligence, including a human source inside the Kremlin,” Woodward notes.

While Biden and his advisers agreed the plan was “dead serious,” it was still hard for them — and their allies — to believe it. “This is what Putin plans to do,” CIA Director Bill Burns said to Biden, according to Woodward. “This would be so crazy,” Biden responded.

Biden tried to reduce tensions back in June 2021, after Russia deployed tens of thousands of troops and military equipment to the Ukrainian border in the spring. After Biden met with Putin in Geneva, some troops were withdrawn. But in the fall, Washington realized that Putin had not abandoned his intentions and took the unprecedented step of releasing intelligence information and publicly accusing the Kremlin of preparing an invasion.

Biden confronted Putin with the intelligence twice in December 2021, first in a video conference and then in what Woodward describes as a “hot 50-minute call” that became so heated that at one point that Putin “raised the risk of nuclear war in a threatening way.”

Biden responded by reminding Putin that “it’s impossible to win” a nuclear war, Woodward says.

According to his information, shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine, the American president told his advisers at a meeting in the Oval Office:

“That fucking Putin. Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”

Based on the alarming new intelligence reports, the White House believed there was a 50% chance Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon — a striking assessment that had skyrocketed up from 5%, Woodward reports. After getting this information, Biden instructed his advisers “to get on the line with the Russians on all channels” and warn them about the response to such actions.

The journalist then described conversations on this matter between Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and then-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “It was probably the most hair-raising moment of the whole war,” Colin Kahl, a senior Pentagon official, later said of the episodes.

In the first phone call, Lloyd Austin warned his Russian counterpart that in case they used nuclear weapons, “all the restraints that we have been operating under in Ukraine would be reconsidered,” Austin said to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to Woodward. “This would isolate Russia on the world stage to a degree you Russians cannot fully appreciate.”

In the second, he also called for not using nuclear weapons when Moscow dramatically claimed the Ukrainians were planning to use a “dirty bomb” — a false story the US believed the Kremlin was pushing as a pretext to deploy a nuclear weapon, while Ukraine denied such plans.

American Journalist Reveals Secret US-Russia Talks Before War

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