2 days before Putin invaded, Ukraine's president said he thought a full-scale attack wasn't going to happen

• Ukrainian President Zelensky said as recently as Monday that he didn't believe Russia would invade.
• He called on Putin to negotiate after Russia recognized two Ukrainian regions as independent.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled as recently as Tuesday that he didn't expect Russia to mount a full-scale invasion.

In the wake of Vladimir Putin's sweeping attack Thursday morning local time, those words appear very distant.

"The Ukrainian side believes that a broad escalation on the part of Russia will not happen," the presidential release read.

That belief was not shared by Western leaders at the time, who had long asserted that Putin had already decided to invade.

It came a day after Russian troops advanced on the Donbas region in the wake of Putin granting formal recognition to two separatist areas there, Luhansk and Donetsk.

Zelensky called the move a "provocation" and continued to call Putin to the negotiating table, a move that Putin ignored.

Ukraine had prepared for the conflict even as its president said he thought it would not come, taking deliveries of armaments from NATO countries, declaring a state of emergency and activating its army reserve.

Russian military movements over the past months had foreshadowed an attack. US estimates say as many as 190,000 troops gathered around Ukraine to its north, east, and south.

In line with that, Western leaders made clear they believed war was coming.

Last Friday, 18 February, US President Joe Biden said he was "convinced" Putin had decided to attack Ukraine and would target the capital, Kyiv, which came to pass on Thursday.

Upon Russia's invasion Thursday morning, Biden called the assault "premeditated."

On Monday — before Putin's move into the Donbas — the UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the BBC that intelligence indicated potential for "the biggest war in Europe since 1945."

Insider's live blog of the invasion is covering developments as they happen.