Around 1 a.m., Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov received an explosive phone call. It was February 24, 2022. For months, Vladimir Putin had assembled an invasion force of more than 100,000 men on the border with Ukraine and then given the green light for the invasion.

The decision came as a complete surprise to Lavrov. Just a few days earlier, the Russian President had asked his Security Council for its opinion on the recognition of two separatist areas in Donbass in an embarrassing meeting that was also televised. The Donbass is an industrial region in the eastern border region of Ukraine with Russia. However, Putin left the Security Council in the dark about his true intentions.

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