FSB was so confident in capture of Ukraine that they arranged housing for themselves in Kyiv — Washington Post

FSB employees were so sure that Ukraine would fall that they spent the last days before full-scale war arranging accommodation in Kyiv, The Washington Post writes in its investigation entitled "5 things you need to know about Russia’s intelligence failures ahead of the invasion of Ukraine."

The publication notes that messages intercepted by Ukrainian special services say that FSB officers asked colleagues for details about apartments and other places they can use as safe houses, residences or bases of operation.

Days before Russian troops entered Ukraine, FSB informants were ordered to leave the capital but leave the keys to their homes for incoming Russian operatives, officials said.

The same material tells about collaborators whom Russia was preparing to appoint as a puppet government in Ukraine. At least two pro-Russian "governments-in-waiting" were lined up.

Among the key allies of the FSB were the fugitive former president Viktor Yanukovych and the MP accused of treason, Viktor Medvedchuk.

Yanukovych was at the center of a group that gathered in Belarus in early March and was ready to return to Ukraine to seize power. The second group, which included former members of Yanukovych's party, gathered in the south of Ukraine, which was seized at the beginning of the war by Russian troops.

Background

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, reports appeared in the mass media that Viktor Yanukovych was brought to Belarus to be declared "President of Ukraine" in captured Kyiv. In May, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, confirmed that the former head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, and a number of other judges were to take part in the legitimization of fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation.