[teiferer]

In hindsight, it's easy to be smart. You picked two examples where somebody said "never gonna happen" and then it happened. How about the countless examples where somebody said the same and then the thing actually didn't happen?

Take millions playing the lottery. To each of them, I can confidently say "you won't win, not gonna happen". For almost all of them I'll be right. There will be one who wins, were I was wrong, and they will say "see, told you so". That doesn't mean my prediction was wrong. It means you are having a reporting bias.

[hnfong]

GP also probably had a sampling bias. The ones who were actually concerned about the impending Russian invasion presumably fled out of the country (or at least, away from the major cities to rural areas that probably see less fighting)

[_heimdall]

I was in a neighboring country in Europe at the time, not Ukraine, but we didn't see any Ukrainians move into our area until a few weeks after the war started.

That's not to say the country wasn't prepared though. If the GP did talk to people on the ground days before it started, saying it won't happen would match the public propaganda at the time coming out of the Ukrainian government and their allies. They knew it was coming and seemed to decide they were better to faint like the weren't ready and avoid public panic before it started.