In the hours before Ukrainian soldiers stormed across Russia's western border, there was no sign from Moscow that anything was amiss.
At midnight at the start of Aug. 6, the Russian defence ministry posted good news: more than 2,500 members of the regiment responsible for the capture of a town in eastern Ukraine would receive state awards for heroism.
Later that morning, as Ukraine began the biggest invasion of Russia since World War Two, the ministry published video showing General Valery Gerasimov, commander of the Russian war effort, visiting a different combat zone, also in Ukraine. He heard reports from commanders and set "tasks for further actions", it said.
The footage did not specify the exact time of the visit, but revealed no concerns, or knowledge, of the events unfolding in Russia's western Kursk region that threatened to upset Gerasimov's plans and shift the course of the two-and-a-half-year war.
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