Russian forces were trying to take control of the Hostomel airport on the north-western outskirts of Ukraine’s capital. Columns of tanks and other heavy equipment were heading towards Kyiv from Belarus. It was only a 130 kilometers journey.
“If the ILs would have been able to land at Hostomel, we might be today in a totally different situation than what he have."
Estonian military intelligence chief colonel Margo Grosberg took pause before said that the answer seems just a tad too long. But he acknowledges that the Hostomel battle that day (24.2.2022) might well have been the most crucial battle in the whole course of the Ukrainian war so far.
Then, roughly 800 km away in Pskov, 18 IL-76 transport planes started their engines and headed towards the takeoff track.
According to VSquare the planes were full of perhaps Russia’s most elite airborne troops from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division. The approximately 1,000 troops loaded onto the planes were highly trained, and many of them already experienced from the Chechen wars.
Their objective was to fly to Kyiv and quickly finish their war of aggression, so-called “special military operation”.
The ILs were already halfway towards the Hostomel airport when, according to VSquare, Christo Grozev was the first to publicly draw attention to it:
“The only plausible goal would be to capture and subordinate Kyiv and install a puppet government today. While the world is watching and doing almost nothing.”
Two different sources confirmed to Delfi Estonia that Estonia’s military intelligence, officially known in English as the Military Intelligence Centre of Estonian Defense Forces, had sent an advance warning to their Ukrainian colleagues before the troops had even stepped on the planes.
And Ukraine poured everything it had around Kyiv to keep the planes from landing. The Ukrainians showered the airfield with artillery fire to make the landing strip unusable. Apparently one of Russia’s KA-52 attack helicopters was shot down and crashed on the runway making it virtually impossible for the ILs to land. After circling in the Ukrainian sky for some time, they needed to return to the base.
Read more from here.
During the war, Grosberg asked for a different type of present from Ukraine. He asked for a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle, drone that Ukraine had captured. The Ukrainians packed one of a specific type of UAVs that was in surprisingly good condition. Back home, the Estonian military intelligence was able to study the UAV and Grosberg says the local defense forces are now better aware of how to defend against it. Then they sent the model back to Ukraine.
Besides Russia’s totally failed initial planning, the second reason that the war has carried out for so long lies in the collective west and its slow political decision making process, according to Grosberg.
“Now, 550-plus days into the war, we have agreed to supply Ukraine with weapons and equipment that president Vladimir Zelensky asked on day one. "
If it would have been granted right then and not delivering heavy equipment by a few pieces at a time only, the situation could be much different.
Grosberg makes clear that he doesn’t think much of the supposed “red lines” that might push Putin to opt for tactical nuclear weapons.
Surely, he says, the new weapons won’t cross that red line, if indeed such a line exists.
"I don’t see the threat of tactical nuclear weapons as significantly high."
Anyway, I don't think that humanity has the right to use nuclear weapons anymore.
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