Aleksey Arestovich, the adviser to the head of the OP of Ukraine, said that the first glimpses of the war in Ukraine were visible as early as 2005. According to him, he knows for sure that it was in 2005 that the strategic operation of the Russian Federation to penetrate Ukraine on many levels: economic, industrial, diplomatic, etc. began. He stated this in an interview with journalist Yulia Latynina on her YouTube channel.

"From the extreme achievements of our counterintelligence, I can name: they took two officials of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers, who had access to secret information," said Arestovich, noting that the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine began to systematically crackdown on the second half of the year.

Now the SBU, the official explained, has a long way to go to restore its real combat capability.

"Until 2005, these were strong bodies in which, of course, there were always loyalists, because the KGB is always the KGB, there are no former KGB members. But the tasks were solved: look at Tuzla," said Arestovych, also recalling the attempts to seize Crimea in 1993 and the compulsion to divide the Black Sea Fleet.

Putin has been planning the takeover of Ukraine since 2005.

"The first Maidan scared them terribly. They set themselves the goal of capturing Ukraine, - said Arestovich. - Many tasks were carried out to take us under control. The results are known: we met the Maidan in 2013, and the beginning of the seizure of Crimea in a situation where our president fled to the Russian Federation, the head of the SBU is a Russian citizen, the minister of defense is a Russian citizen, and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is a Russian citizen… This has never happened in any historical period. so that you, attacking the country, seizing a piece of territory from it, would have all the security forces of your country's citizens. It's just a Klondike."