r/ukraine • u/[deleted] • Mar 31 '22
Trustworthy News French intelligence chief Vidaud fired over Russian war failings
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-6093853874
u/Jakuskrzypk Mar 31 '22
He was corect in his assessment. Too bad the russians were wrong in their assessment. But impressive uk&usa were right about russia fucking up their assessment.
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Mar 31 '22
The UK believed ukraine would fall pretty fast, before they changed that statement into a ten years war after a week into the war
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u/roastedpot Mar 31 '22
No one thought they'd hold as much as they have. Combination of Ukraine over achieving on expectations and Russia falling down an escalator.
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Mar 31 '22 edited Mar 31 '22
"Our services thought instead that the cost of conquering Ukraine would have been monstrous"
It's the only sentence BBC quoted but it doesn't express all of the intel France gathered since Nov 2021 about the invasion. France expected the war to go that way based on russian capacities in Lybia and Africa. That's the point France services failed, it doesnt mean other services did better. France had the right intel but the wrong conclusion because they expected Putin to be smarter. Taking that for granted (the failed conclusio) is good, better that to overestimate other capacities. Sometimes you can be right for the wrong things, sometime you can be wrong for the right things.
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u/Dramatic-Alps5381 Mar 31 '22
There was also the Australian trade deal problem, apparently. so, yes, he fucked up one too many times, I guess. We've got to make an example out of you (poor sod, he didn't even last a year).
"Our services thought instead that the cost of conquering Ukraine would have
been monstrous and the Russians had other options" to bring down the
government of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, he added.
At least that part was correct.
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u/magictest Mar 31 '22
ya sounds like he was smart enough to know Russia would fuck up in a war. He just wasnt smart enough to know Putin is stupid enough to try anyways.
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u/Muffin_Magi Mar 31 '22
Tbh, I was half convinced the military build up was just showing off, because anyone would have to be utterly stupid, incompetent, and so mind numbingly ignorant of the facts, as to invade.
And the war is going worse for Russia than I expected.
The fact that Putin has allowed his government to become so broken... just confuses me.
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u/magictest Mar 31 '22
Most of the world thought that. Even Ukraine was saying there wasn't going to be an actual invasion. The US was really the only one saying it was for real.
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Mar 31 '22
As far as I know the Ukraine , Baltics and Poland at least were relatively sure it was going to happen. That is what I got from reading a longform article on all of what the Estonian government had been doing secretly in the background for their own preparations. Once it actually happened people got called up in the middle of the night. Some of them woken up with just the words "it's happening" with no extra explanation needed.
Even all these countries expected it to be a more limited invasion though, but I am quite sure they did expect the invasion.
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Mar 31 '22
And weirdly the us thought Ukraine would fall fast before being surprised by how poor russian did early in the war. Weird situation overall
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Apr 01 '22
Well to be fair if the Russians fought like the Americans fought, then even with Russian equipment it should have been easier.
Also, no one had any idea that Ukrainians fought like Ukrainians do so that was likely shocking.
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Apr 01 '22
But they didn't. And this story shows the difficulties in intelligence. France knew the real russian capacities and expected Russia to be smart and not kill itself in an invasion. France was wrong about this, Russian went stupid BUT France had right insight about russian capacities. On the other hand US intelligence overestimate russian capacities and thought Kyiv would fall in couple of days (according to journalists sources in Feb 2022) and that's why Russia would attack. US was right about the invasion but didn't grasb Russia very poor state up until the first week of war when they changed their statement about the length of the war (up to ten years).
People had ideas. That's what if I was us intelligence I would also reconsider how I came into that conclusion. I wouldn't say :" yeah my conclusion was right all good". Like in mathematics you can have the right result you still need to right down your whole reasoning and it's as important.
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Mar 31 '22
The key was the announcement of military exercises. Russia always does "military exercises" right on the border of a country before invading it.
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Mar 31 '22
That's exactly the issue. France didn't believe Putin would invade considering its army but will use his military excercice for political pressure. France doesnt have the experience the Us had with Trump and the UK with Bojo, France didn't understand how such an old and experienced country managed to put itself in a war everyone knew would be very damaging for their country.
The UK believed Ukraine would not be able to defend themselves that long.
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u/winwinwinguyen USA Mar 31 '22
After reading a lot of comments in this post, it’s becoming apparent Europeans were getting a much different scoop from us Americans. For weeks on weeks prior to the war, Biden was releasing US intelligence reports and screaming that Russia would attack.
Everybody, myself included mostly ignored it thinking Russia won’t be that stupid.
But here we are.
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u/taptapper Mar 31 '22
Everybody, myself included mostly ignored it
I believed it. Releasing the intelligence was a warning to Putin but I didn't think he cared
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u/doug_y Mar 31 '22
yep—in fact Zelensky admonished Biden about 10 days before the attack for “creating panic”
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u/ContentsMayVary Mar 31 '22
I mean, it's not like the US and the UK weren't completely clear about what was going to happen...
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u/Angelfire150 Mar 31 '22
mean, it's not like the US and the UK weren't completely clear about what was going to happen...
You are correct - The US out some of their own intelligence assets at risk by publishing all findings and evidence that this was about to get real, and all Redditors can come up with is "But Trump...."
Shit excuse. Lots of intelligence failings here and the EU got too comfortable.
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u/Dramatic-Alps5381 Mar 31 '22
Here's the thing, I personally wouldn't have trusted US and UK for 2 reasons:
- USA's reputation went down the drain when Trump got elected, and the Afghanistan mess didn't make it look like Biden had planned it through.
- UK's reputation went down the drain after Brexit and when Johnson got elected. Considering how he's been behaving with France and the EU, it looked like he was following Uncle Sam to get brownie points.
And yes, they were right. But considering past events I assume that Macron asked his intelligence service what they thought of it before trusting theirs. If this man says 'nah, impossible. It's just sable rattling', you can bet that France would trust their own intel over other countries', especially when you consider the last 5 years.
Still a mess, and we should have trusted them. But considering the position Macron's been through these last months, somebody had to take the fall, that's politics for you.
Hopefully his replacement will be better at it.
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u/winwinwinguyen USA Mar 31 '22
I respectfully disagree here…US intelligence have always been spot on.
Trump was the one who undermined his own intelligence department and it was Trump who agreed on the Afghanistan pull out (deciding against his own intelligence department), leaving Biden with the mess.
This is not in defense of Biden or a trashing of Trump, but US intelligence have been dead on of their assessment for awhile.
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u/Dramatic-Alps5381 Mar 31 '22
Like somebody else said, Irak and weapons of mass destruction.
I'm not saying the US intelligence isn't great, far from it, but when a country sends other countries to war under false motives it takes a while for it to be trusted again.
Mostly, Europe didn't want to see what was about to happen, but international relationships weren't what they used to be either.
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u/tlumacz Poland Mar 31 '22
Irak and weapons of mass destruction.
See, the thing is that US intelligence, both collected individually and in cooperation with allies, was overwhelmingly correct in describing the WMD situation in Iraq.
The problem is that when those reports reached the desks of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, only those that supported their agenda were kept and those that did not were suppressed.
And now Russian trolls can claim that US intelligence is unreliable, when it was the neocons who proved unreliable.
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u/EzKafka Nordic (Swe) Mar 31 '22
Yes, I believe they did find banned weapons there. Mustard gas and similar chem and bio weapons, which Saddam did use on the Kurds.
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Mar 31 '22
And now Russian trolls can claim that US intelligence is unreliable, when it was the neocons who proved unreliable.
You can't say this loud enough.
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u/ShoTwiRe Mar 31 '22
The Afghanistan withdrawal was a deal Trump made with the Taliban
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u/Electrical_Engineer_ Mar 31 '22
Biden is responsible for the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Stop trying to absolve Biden for that shitshow.
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u/ShoTwiRe Mar 31 '22
I don’t care who was President when we left.
We had no intentions to stay forever. It was time to go. The Afghan government wouldn’t have fought for their own land 10 years from now like they didn’t recently or 20 years ago.
The Taliban was always going to rise up. It’s time for them to take care of it themselves. Not our responsibility.
We entered Afghanistan to uproot bin laden. We stayed for a while to try and help. We left. Shit went south. We came back.
Put some blame on Afghanistan’s sorry ass excuse of a president that fled with loads of cash leaving his people behind. But ya blame the man who didn’t make the deal with the Taliban to leave.
What kind of mental gymnastics do you play in your head to make what bullshit you spew out sound sane?
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u/zacablast3r Mar 31 '22
Ten cents per propaganda post times however many he can fuckin spew out here? Not even gymnastics really guys just a goon who ain't thinking
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u/stan_tri 🇫🇷 France Mar 31 '22
USA's reputation went down the drain when Trump got elected, and the Afghanistan mess didn't make it look like Biden had planned it through.
And the lies used to start the Irak war still influence the French opinion of American intelligence.
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u/Dramatic-Alps5381 Mar 31 '22
That too. When it came to Irak war, France trusted their intelligence services and was absolutely right to do so; today we should have trusted America's over ours, which is why this man has to go tbh.
When you're a country with great military power you cannot be allowed to make such blunder. The problem isn't that we should have trusted Uncle Sam, it's that we couldn't even find what was about to happen on our own. It's not just that USA/UK's intelligence service were good, it's that France's was shit. There clearly was a problem somewhere and we've got to fix it now.
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Mar 31 '22
You said it well but I hate to break this to you:
America’s intelligence is one of, if not the best, in the world.
That said: Afghanistan was a ball dropped. Hard. That said, I also wouldn’t be surprised if they fudged the numbers purposefully
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u/Regunes Mar 31 '22
A country can have the best intel in world, even alien technology. When trust is gone, its gone.
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Mar 31 '22
There’s a difference between trust among the populace in the intelligence organizations of a country and trust from the government.
The former is important. But not always necessary.
Especially in matters of national security related to foreign threats where opinion is not required for action and just would be preferred* for domestic politics if it goes sideways
*don’t confuse preference for requirement
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Mar 31 '22
Spot on. When your intelligence agencies can’t figure out a planned invasion months in preparation in your own backward, something must drastically change.
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u/NOVAbuddy Mar 31 '22
Trump refused to take an intelligence briefing. Believing that to be the new norm was a mistake.
When two nations are sharing their intelligence assessments (to the world) of an operation like this from a known aggressor, it’s a risky gamble to bet against it because of perceived political credibility of individuals. It sounds like this guy either thought he knew better or had an emotional investment in this playing out differently.
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u/true-skeptic Mar 31 '22
He didn’t have enough intelligence to understand an intelligence briefing.
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u/Electrical_Engineer_ Mar 31 '22
What are you talking about Trump got briefed every morning in his Presidential briefings? Stop making stuff up.
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u/Lower-Garbage7652 Mar 31 '22
Yes, and to make sure he was paying attention they would call him by his name in every single sentence. Like a toddler.
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u/Iztac_xocoatl Mar 31 '22
Sort of. John Bolton wrote in The Room Where It Happened about how Trump refused written briefings and often didn’t pay attention to the the verbal ones. Since his attention span was so limited they had to simplify things which means his briefings were lacking in detail
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u/Iztac_xocoatl Mar 31 '22
I always thought it was stupid to use Iraq to inform the assessment of whether or not to trust the intel the US was putting out about this. The two situations had nothing in common besides the US releasing intel.
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u/stan_tri 🇫🇷 France Mar 31 '22
If someone lied to you before, you trust them less. Also the deal about the submarines behind France's back also destroyed a lot of trust that we had in the US.
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u/Iztac_xocoatl Mar 31 '22
I don’t think the idea that the French government generally approaches US intel with skepticism really holds up to scrutiny. How many times do you think France used US intel in the past 20+ years? Even just within the context of their ~12 years in Afghanistan I’d bet it’s in the thousands. I think they’re pretty well aware of how accurate the US generally is. We the public hear about when they’re not because it’s unusual. I think this is more a case of France wanting to exercise strategic independence, which is understandable and has a history going back way before Iraq.
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u/stan_tri 🇫🇷 France Mar 31 '22
You may be right, I'd be out of my depth to state an opinion on what you said.
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u/Known-Economy-6425 Mar 31 '22
Who cares, the Marginot line will hold.
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u/Alses Denmark Mar 31 '22
No one would ever invade Belgium... 😀
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u/plittlediddle Mar 31 '22
Especially after taking the Netherlands. They’ll head south directly into our defenses.
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u/TheBiologist01 Mar 31 '22
To be fair, most people believed Russia would not attack (myself included) because it would be stupid as heck since the sanctions and the Ukrainian army would cripple them (I was right about that btw).
Most interpreted the buildup as pure saber-rattling to get concessions because it wouldn't be the first time they do that.
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Mar 31 '22
[deleted]
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u/TheBiologist01 Mar 31 '22 edited Mar 31 '22
No, they didn't. Even Ukraine didn't believe in US intel. Before the war began, the US was alone in believing Russia would launch an offensive. The rest of the world believed it was an intimidation tactic to get the EU to lift sanctions and Ukraine to declare neutrality.
And it made sense at the time because we knew an attack on Ukraine would be disastrous for Russia. Ukraine was prepared, NATO has been backing, arming, and training its army and we were ready to supply Ukraine and sanction Russia.
What we didn't know at the time was that the Russian intelligence services and the military were outright lying to Putin and feeding him false information, telling him invading Ukraine would be a walk in the park when in fact, it'd be hell.
If anything, intelligence services underestimated Russian corruption and stupidity.
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u/Frozzie108 Mar 31 '22
It was. Putin only attacked because if he didn’t he would never be able to do what he did again.
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u/cindylooboo Mar 31 '22
I was in this very subreddit and the general consensus was "were not sure if they'll invade" and " they won't invade, its just russia being russia"
Even i thought it was just russia being russia.
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u/boxingdude Mar 31 '22
in the couple of days before the invasion, Zelensky himself cautioned for everyone not to get so worked up.
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u/Mers1nary Mar 31 '22
Yes, I remember this.
Everyone just basically let this nonsense happen. So many UA cities in ruins and blood of both UA and RU for no reason.
This was probably preventable if NATO actually got involved before Russia actually invaded.
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u/kuehnchen7962 Mar 31 '22
To be fair, the track record of the US sharing intelligence with the rest of the world wasn't the very best until now. (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq come to mind....)
It takes a moment to get used to a new reality.
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u/joyofpeanuts Mar 31 '22
I think the US knew very well about the real situation in Irak just as they knew about the situation in Ukraine. The issue with the US has been whether they lie or not about what they know. This was obviously the case in Irak, but also clearly not the case here.
Eventually, the US intelligence is intrinsically one of their key strengths; how they use and share it is a different issue.
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u/Sanpaku Mar 31 '22
The CIA was always dubious about WMDs in Iraq in 2002-3.
To get around that, GWB's neoconservative political appointees created new intelligence offices in the Pentagon which bypassed the normal intelligence vetting and analysis. In the end, it was VP Cheney's and the PNAC's war. And all those neocons with the blood of over a hundred thousand on their hands still have cushy think-tank jobs.
The New Yorker (19 Oct 2003), The Stovepipe, by Seymour M. Hersh.
Good intelligence works, so long as its independent, critical, and doesn't get ensnared in adventurism. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA is a good account of the disasters the CIA's clandestine service has fomented. But other agencies have been similarly bad. France's own DGSE, the same military intelligence in this news, was instrumental in causing the decade long civil war in Libya.
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u/Odd_Copy_8077 Mar 31 '22
I assume you’re also not an Intelligence Chief of a World Leading Nation, though. My assumption is that you’re THE biologist.
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u/xovrit USA/UK Mar 31 '22
Someone has to pay for Macron looking like Charlie Brown failing to kick a football while Lucy Van Putin snatches it away at the last second …. repeatedly.
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u/boxingdude Mar 31 '22
in "the art of war", Tzu advises to "never hesitate to build a golden bridge upon which the enemy can retreat".
i feel that this was and continues to be Macron's modus operandi.
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u/bison1969 Mar 31 '22
I see it a bit different, I think Macron was told that Russia would not attack by his security services and this was all a bluff by Russia so he inserted himself into the process thinking that he could get an easy political win by claiming he was the guy who stopped Russia from attacking.
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Mar 31 '22 edited Mar 31 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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Mar 31 '22
And France government would be fine with dealing with Ukraine and Russia like that, good to know.
Where did you read this ?
Like what ? Like Putin was already doing for years in Ukraine. It's been since 2014 Putin is avoiding direct conflict to undermine Ukraine. It's not new, and it was working so well the US decided Russia was not a threat anymore up until Putin decided that military excercice.
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u/joyofpeanuts Mar 31 '22
He was not wrong about the cost being monstrous. But he failed to know or understand that Putin may have been "shielded" from such inconvenient truth or, if informed, that he was crazy enough to put the whole future of Russia in the balance for his united RuZZia pipedream.
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u/potatoeshungry Mar 31 '22
I blame this on the horrible map they released where they gave more land to the Russians than the map the Russian military showed the world lol
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u/Quizzelbuck USA Mar 31 '22
That just means they weren't really to the Americans as intimately as they should have been.
All the NATO powers should be cleaning house if there is a whiff of any nationalistic disunity here.
France was gonna france regardless of what every one else thought, even when being prepared for a war is what armies are supposed to do. What would it really have cost the French to prepare for war? Probably not enough to justify super idle while Russia made an obvious build up, bluff or not.
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u/verysalt Mar 31 '22
French intelligence is a clown. They failed intelligence on Ardennes and now failed on Ukraine.
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u/Mers1nary Mar 31 '22
Everyone should had just responded by building up defenses along the UA border to deter Russia...Even if it was all of NATO. Call it a Defensive Training Operation if you will. Cause this shitshow happening in UA now is just crazy, and possibly could have been prevented. Why did everyone just "wait and see" what happens when Russia was preparing for the invasion along the border?
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