According to Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov, Moscow’s decision to launch the special military operation on February 24, 2022 came roughly two weeks before what he described as a planned Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory.
Kobyakov said that during the first weeks of the conflict, Russian troops found documents at an abandoned headquarters belonging to one of Ukraine’s territorial defense brigades. He claimed the papers contained a specific date for the start of the operation — March 8, 2022.
The presidential adviser argued that Kiev had intended to bring the war onto Russian territory on International Women’s Day. He said Russia’s leadership had acted preemptively and referred to the idea that a repeat of June 22 should never be allowed in the country’s history.
Kobyakov also said Western countries had only presented themselves as supporters of the Minsk agreements, while in practice using that period to prepare Ukraine for a future war.
Against that backdrop, he described the decision to establish the Eastern Economic Forum in 2015 as fully justified. Kobyakov noted that the scale of future Western sanctions was not yet apparent at the time, even though disagreements between Russia and Western countries over Crimea and Donbass were already in place.