Czech analyst: Western experts warned of Russian aggression but not its full scale

Czech security analyst, publicist, and Colonel Otakar Foltyn made this statement in an interview with Ukrinform.

“We spoke about this repeatedly, first within professional circles, then publicly, and we were called Russophobes for it. Today, looking back, I must say that our only mistake was that we should have been even more decisive, because all our predictions turned out to be too mild compared to what Russia actually did… We had been saying for at least 10 years, within a relatively small circle of military analysts, that Russia would be aggressive. No one wanted to hear it,” the analyst noted.

Foltyn was one of the co-authors of the book “At the Crossroads,” published in 2016, in which experts warned of Russian aggression based on the lessons of 2014. Even then, in his view, it should have become clear to even the most naive people that Russia would once again launch some form of military aggression.

However, even those who foresaw an escalation of Russian aggression, and who had been watching the buildup of troops along the border with Ukraine with concern for months, did not expect that in February 2022 the Russians would make such a colossal error in judgment, believe their own propaganda, and launch a full-scale invasion, failing to believe that Ukrainians would defend their land.

The analyst acknowledged that through military exercises on their western borders and in Belarus, the Russians had “acclimated” the West to the presence of troops in those areas. And although by the end of 2021 it had become clear that they were taking measures they had not taken before (such as stockpiling blood supplies, which is done when expecting heavy casualties), the concentration of troops was still smaller than the number of forces the USSR deployed during its 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, a much smaller country.

“It was obvious that the operation, as they were preparing it, could not be successful militarily. Nevertheless, they did it, and what stopped them, first and foremost, was the will of the Ukrainians, who in the initial stage defended themselves practically on their own… It didn’t make sense, and we thought they couldn’t be that stupid. But it wasn’t stupidity; it was arrogance,” the expert noted.

But now that Russia is already bogged down in the war, it will stop and begin negotiating peace “precisely where it gets hit in the face.” Russia, Foltyn noted, has already “gotten hit in the face,” but so far that is not enough. He predicts that if the West continues to support Ukraine, and China’s approach is to help Russia just enough to keep it barely afloat, Russia will not be able to win.

As reported by Ukrinform, the Ukrainian delegation succeeded in including amendments in the final resolution of the 152nd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) condemning the abduction of Ukrainian children and Russian aggression.