There was a pretty heated exchange today between Senator King and General Berrier (DIA Director) with regard to whether the Intel Community failed to predict/understand Russia's war in #Ukraine.
I've seen a lot of 20/20 hindsight with regard to the issue, and while there is some merit to saying the IC missed the mark, we shouldn't kid ourselves. Russia had every chance in the world to win this war in days or weeks.
1/5
That they didn't says more about how badly they fucked up, than it does about Ukraine's will to fight. That shouldn't take away from Ukraine's accomplishments though. They took extreme measures, like flooding huge swaths of their own land north of Kyiv, to hold out until world opinion changed. Once support started flowing, the tide turned.
But I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the IC for not predicting Russia would screw up at every single possible opportunity.
2/5
Yes, there were opportunities to identify horrible flaws in Russian logistics, C&C, and morale. But let's be real. Russia is losing because they didn't use the advantages they had at the start of the war, not because they didn't have those advantages.
Rather than wage a war, Russia tried to bluff with the sheer size of their army. They wanted to take Ukraine whole, and inherit its economic success.
3/5
So while the US IC, and the rest of the world, expected Russia to actually wage a full war (destroying strategic resources, claiming air superiority, and actually putting their numbers to use), Russia instead tried to intimidate Ukraine into surrendering mostly intact.
Ukraine for their part, and Zelenskyy should get *huge* credit for this, put on a world-wide PR blitz. They shamed the world into action, when everyone just wanted to look the other way.
4/5
So, I don't actually see any huge flaws in the IC assessments. They actually did a remarkable job of shining a light on a lot of Russia's plans. If they said there is a 90% chance that Ukraine falls in days or weeks, they wouldn't have actually been wrong. Reality just happened to fall in the remaining 10% of "Russia is going to fuck up everywhere they possibly can, and Zelenskyy is going to unite the world in a way no one thought possible anymore."
5/5