NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said that he went to bed on the eve of February 24, 2022, knowing full well about the carnage that would explode in a few hours.
"I went to sleep. But it was a very short night because I knew that at some stage, in a few hours, someone would wake me up - and that's exactly what happened," he told AFP in an interview a week before the first anniversary of the invasion.
"Around four o'clock, my chief of staff called me and he briefly told me that they had started, that is, the invasion had begun. It's not surprising, because we knew."
While many around the world hoped to the last that Moscow would not risk launching a full-scale offensive, NATO's secretary general had no doubt that Putin was ready to act.
"One can be shocked by the brutality of war. But there is no way to be surprised because this was indeed what was predicted months before the invasion,” he said.
Now, after a year of war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and undermined Europe's security, Stoltenberg warned that NATO must be ready for a new era of confrontation with Russia that could last a long time.
"President Putin wants a different Europe, wants a Europe where he can control his neighbors, where he can decide what countries can do," Stoltenberg said.
NATO will, he said, "always look at where there are opportunities to re-enter a situation where there is room to improve relations, but with the current behavior of the Russian regime, the regime in Moscow, this is impossible."
Stoltenberg insisted that the invasion “didn't really change NATO much because we had to remember that the war didn't start in February 2022. The war began in 2014, when Russia first illegally annexed Crimea.
The secretary general rejected accusations that NATO could have done more to prevent a full-scale Russian invasion by arming Ukraine sooner after Crimea or bringing it closer to the alliance's protective shield.
"This is a war of President Putin's choice, for which only one person is responsible - President Putin and decision-makers in Moscow. We can analyze, we can discuss, we can all consider different solutions, but this in no way removes the responsibility of the Russian president for this war.
We are here to help Ukraine win this war and provide it with the weapons, ammunition, and support it needs," he said.
If President Putin wins in Ukraine, it will be a tragedy for Ukrainians. But it would also be dangerous for everyone, because it would then send a message to him and other authoritarian leaders that dictators can achieve their goals by using military force.
