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In the days and weeks leading up to Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, the White House repeatedly warned that conflict was imminent.
But despite these warnings from the U.S. that war was on the horizon, Europe didn't want to believe that Russia would actually attack its eastern European neighbor, the European Union's top diplomat revealed on Tuesday.
“Some things have happened in the past that we knew they could happen, but some of them have been a surprise,” said Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign and security policy chief, during a speech at the bloc's ambassadors conference in Brussels.
“We did not believe that the war was coming. I have to recognise that here, in Brussels. The Americans were telling us, ‘They will attack, they will attack,' and we were quite reluctant to believe it,” Borrell said.
“I remember very well when [U.S. Secretary of State Antony] Blinken phoned me and told me, ‘Well, it is going to happen this weekend.' And certainly, two days later, at 5 o'clock in the morning, [Russia] started bombing Kyiv,” he recalled.
In January 2021, as Russia gathered tens of thousands of troops along its border with Ukraine, U.S. officials — including President Joe Biden — cautioned that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ready to initiate widespread conflict at any moment.
By mid-February, the White House said the risk…