"In September 2021, US State Department told Yermak and me: ’Guys, dig trenches!’" - Head of Foreign Ministry Kuleba
Six months before the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, the American partners warned the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba and the head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak about the future attack of the Russian Federation.
The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told about this in an interview with journalist Dmytro Hordon, Censor.NET reports.
According to Kuleba, President Volodymyr Zelensky, head of the PO Andrii Iermak, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, head of the Defence Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov and he" possessed approximately the same amount of information" regarding Russia's preparations before a full-scale invasion.
"...We all began to receive a certain amount of information from the fall of last year. The first bells were in September. Yermak and I were in Washington. And we have already began to receive such first signals. We took this as seriously as possible... We were with Andrii at one meeting at the State Department, but not with the Secretary of State, he was not in Washington that day... And a person came, sat down, just like you, put a cup of coffee and said: "Well, guys, Dig trenches." That's how I heard it for the first time," Kuleba said.
At the same time, the minister noted that this person who advised "to dig trenches" was a high-ranking official, so it would be strange to be convinced that these are ordinary words.
He further stated that the problem of the early autumn was that "they tell you, 'we see that it is going to war', but after that there is a full stop, and no more information is given to you."
According to Kuleba, after analyzing all the data in October, he understood that there would be a war. However, I thought that hostilities would take place only in Donbas.
He added that Ukraine did not conduct more open preparations for defense in order to keep the economy "afloat".
