There's a lot to think about, with the benefit of hindsight. Surely, there's a lot of reflection for the intelligence community, and the policy-makers who had access to intelligence.

But analytically, I struggle to reach clear conclusions in terms of "lessons learned" for external observers and area experts. [8/8]

There's a whole line of criticism associated with the unfortunate label of "Westsplaining" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westsplaining - blaming Western-European analysts for ignoring voices from the region and downplaying Russia's threat.

Yet, in this most momentous of times, listening to voices from Ukraine was a major contributing factor leading observers such as myself to downplay the risks that an invasion was forthcoming. [6/8]

Even before the latest long-read, Shaun Walker had been reflecting on this point back in 2022, with an article discussing how "Some are looking back at weeks before invasion and asking if more could have been done" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/ukraine-russia-war-ukrainians-question-mistakes-preparations-buildup

As one of the interviewees for that article put it, "Of course there are a lot of questions, the Russians were already drawing the letter Z on their equipment and everyone was saying something is coming, and our guys here were saying ‘don’t worry’." [4/8]