Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going very well, to say the least. And to make matters worse, we now have an idea of what Putin was up to after all: Fleeing Russian soldiers left behind key military documents that indicated Russian President Vladimir Putin had plans to seize all of Ukraine, the director of Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said in a Telegram statement on Wednesday.
Ukrainian forces discovered the documents while searching through the northeastern town of Trostyanets in Sumy Oblast, the statement said.
Trostyanets, located about 230 miles from the capital, Kyiv, was liberated by Ukrainian troops in late March after a monthlong Russian occupation, The New York Times reported.
Investigators found “important documents of soldiers of the Russian Federation’s Armed Forces that give a clear understanding that Russia was preparing to seize all the territory of Ukraine,” Oleksiy Sukhachev, the director of Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, said in the statement.
“All this information will be studied,” the statement continued.
Insider has not seen the documents and has not been able to independently verify the claims.
Sukhachev said Ukrainian officials had inspected over 2,000 hectares of the destroyed town since its liberation.
Aside from the documents, soldiers also found that more than 300 residential buildings had been permanently damaged, Sukhachev said. A number of unexploded shells and bombs had also been found, he added.
The Russian military papers appeared to confirm earlier assessments by Western officials that Putin had plans to swiftly take all of Ukraine, but failed to do so.
Russian troops — who expected to seize Kyiv within days — retreated from the capital in early April and refocused their offensive in Ukraine’s eastern region.
Sophia Ankel is a News Reporter based in London.
