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image source, Archyde.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers are not giving him full information regarding how badly the war in Ukraine is going, the White House said Wednesday.
According to the US, advisers are also not telling it regarding the full impact Western sanctions are having on the Russian economy.
“We have information that Putin has felt cheated by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield told reporters.
“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers regarding the poor performance of the Russian military and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions.
“Because his main advisers they are too afraid to tell the truth”Bedingfield added.
In response to the White House remarks, the Kremlin said the United States has a “total misunderstanding” of the situation.
Putin’s main spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, told reporters: “They just don’t understand what is going on in the Kremlin, they don’t understand President Putin, they don’t understand how decisions are made and they don’t understand the style of our work.
Peskov added that this is “worrying” because “that total misunderstanding leads to wrong decisions that have bad consequences.”
image source, Getty Images
Some four million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.
But US intelligence officials believe Putin’s advisers may be afraid to deliver bad news to a leader who has in the past has been willing to take extreme measures once morest those who dissent within the Russian system.
“One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that we don’t have people in those systems who tell the truth, or have the ability to tell the truth, to whoever is in power. And I think that’s something we’re seeing in Russia,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Wednesday during a visit to Algiers.
For his part, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described “disturbing” that Putin “does not understand completely the extent to which their forces are failing” so far in Ukraine.
“One result of that might be a not-so-faithful effort to negotiate some sort of deal here,” Kirby said.
“If you’re not fully informed of how badly you’re doing, how are your negotiators going to come up with a lasting deal?”
On the ground, US and Ukrainian officials say Russia continues to relocate forces out of kyiv, likely as part of its effort to refocus on eastern regions.
According to the British Ministry of Defense, Russia has problems sustaining operations in various areas, which is why it has apparently decided to focus on the east, in the Donbas region, and abandon the objective of surrounding and controlling kyiv, the capital.
image source, Getty Images
British intelligence further says that Russian troops in Ukraine they are demoralized, lack equipment and refuse to follow orders.
According to Jeremy Fleming, head of the UK’s cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ, Russia’s announcement on Tuesday that it would reduce its operations around kyiv and Chernigov adds to indications that Russia “has grossly misjudged the situation” and is has been forced to “significantly rethink” its strategy.
“We have seen Russian soldiers, without weapons or morals, refusing to follow orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own plane,” Fleming said in a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“And while Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, what is going on and the extent of these misjudgments should be crystal clear to the regime.”
New challenge
The apparent breakdown in communication within the Kremlin is a new challenge for Ukrainian, European and American politicians seeking to end the conflict.
The leaders of the Ukrainian and Russian negotiating teams offered a mixed picture of talks on Wednesdaysaying they had made progress during talks in Istanbul on Tuesday, but there were still disagreements on key issues.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky characterized the talks as “just words, no details yet,” following an equally pessimistic assessment from Russia.
Peace talks are due to restart on April 1, according to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia.
But in a social media post cited by Archyde.comArakhamia noted that Ukraine proposed that the leaders of the two countries meet and that Russia refused, saying more work needed to be done to draft a treaty.
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