Late on the evening of 23 February, Bruno Kahl, the chief of Germany's BND foreign intelligence service, landed in Kyiv. By that point, the US, British and Polish spy agencies had already determined that Russian attack orders had been given. Panicked messages about the imminent invasion were even circulating among foreign journalists.
But Kahl was either oblivious to this information or unperturbed by it, according to The Guardian's investigation as reported by "Hvylya".
Soon after his arrival at an upmarket Kyiv hotel, the German ambassador received an order from Berlin to evacuate all remaining diplomatic staff by road immediately. The threat was too urgent to wait until morning, said the foreign ministry. Even then, Kahl declined an invitation to join the midnight diplomatic convoy, citing his important meetings the next day.
Those meetings never took place. Instead, Kahl had to be extracted from Kyiv on the day of the invasion with the help of Polish intelligence, along roads gridlocked with fleeing Ukrainians.
The episode captured the depth of Germany's intelligence failure. Even as other Western services sounded the alarm, Berlin's intelligence assessments accepted that some military action was possible but still rejected the idea of a full-scale invasion targeting Kyiv - right until Russian missiles started landing. The European Commission has since outlined when it believes the war may end, while France and Ukraine have moved toward joint defense production - a level of cooperation unimaginable in the days when European capitals dismissed American warnings.