Demoralized Russian soldiers are sabotaging their own equipment – including accidentally shooting down their own planes – and senior generals are lying to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the success of his military campaign in Ukraine, the UK’s spy chief said on Thursday.
Jeremy Fleming, head of the Government Communications Headquarters, said during a speech in Australia that Putin “massively misjudged” both the capabilities of the Russian armed forces and the will of the Ukrainian people to fight for their homeland.
“It is clear that he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people,” Fleming said. “He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would shake up. He underestimated the economic fallout of the sanctions regime and overestimated his military’s ability to achieve a quick victory.”
“We have seen Russian soldiers lacking in arms and morale, refusing to obey orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own plane,” Fleming added.
The spymaster went on to claim that Putin’s inner circle is afraid to tell the truth to the Russian leader, although “the extent of these miscalculations must be crystal clear to the regime.”
A new report has led British intelligence to believe Russian troops are sabotaging their vehicles and personnel to end the war with Ukraine.EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY
A building burns after a Russian shelling in the city of Irpin March 30, 2022. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak
A destroyed Russian tank in Ukraine. EPO/ROMAN PILIPEY
Fleming added that Russia’s command and control structure was in disarray while the invasion of Ukraine had led to Putin’s “personal war.”
The British official’s observations align with those of the US and other Western nations, who say Putin is surrounded by a battery of “yes men” who feed him false information about the poor performance of Russian troops and the extent of sanctions against Russia harm economy.
“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has created ongoing tensions between Putin and his military leadership,” Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told reporters on Wednesday.
A Ukrainian soldier guards what officials say is a Russian soldier who surrendered to Ukrainian forces REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak
Burnt out cars and the ruins of a shopping mall in Retroville after Russian shelling.Mykhaylo Palinchak/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire
“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how poorly the Russian military is performing and how sanctions are crippling the Russian economy because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth,” she added.
Bedingfield said the White House released an intelligence assessment showing the dispute at the top of Moscow’s chain of command “so that there is a full understanding of what kind of strategic blunder this was for Russia and the Russian people.”
Fleming said Western nations are deliberately releasing their intelligence findings to stay ahead of Russia’s misinformation campaign about the war in Ukraine.
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Ukrainian soldiers walk next to the body of a Russian soldier on the front lines near Kyiv as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues.REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
According to sources, Vladimir Putin is believed to be misled by his own people for fear of upsetting the Russian leader Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS
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The body of a Russian soldier lies in a ditch after Ukrainian troops retook the village of Mala Rogan on March 30, 2022. FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images
“Many of these ‘truths’ are increasingly coming from intelligence agencies. It is already a remarkable feature of this conflict how much intelligence was released so quickly to stay ahead of Putin’s actions,” he said, adding: “Deeply classified information is being released on this and many other issues to ensure the truth is heard. At this pace and scale, it is truly unprecedented.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that “we would agree with the conclusion that Mr. Putin was not fully briefed.”
“It’s his military. It’s his war. He chose it. To be honest, the fact that he may not have the full context, that he may not fully understand the extent to which his forces are failing in Ukraine is a little uncomfortable,” Kirby told reporters.
According to the British government’s communications chief, Jeremy Fleming, Vladimir Putin seriously misjudged the will and determination of the Ukrainian people. APAP Photo/Frank Augstein, file
A European diplomat noted that this assessment was in line with EU thinking.
“Putin thought things were going better than they were. That’s the problem of surrounding yourself with ‘yes men’ or just sitting with them at the end of a very long table,” the official said.
A notable critic of the assessment was former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, who told CNN Thursday morning, “I’m not buying this analysis.”
“I don’t think there’s any government in human history that I’m aware of where one of the top leader’s advisors wasn’t perfectly prepared to say that another top advisor completely messed things up,” he said Bolton. “I guess so [the Russians] got the info. I think their calculations turned out to be as inaccurate as those of US intelligence or French intelligence, which predicted there would be no invasion.”
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Ukrainian medics carry the body of a Russian soldier after Ukrainian troops recaptured the village of Malaya Rohan. FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images
In the same interview, Bolton suggested that “persistent corruption in the Russian military” was to blame for discontent among the armed forces, and described the Kremlin as “an extortionate organization, not a government.”
“I think the catastrophic performance of the Russian military has caused such reputational damage that I think this is another reason why he sees Putin as having no incentive to negotiate. If his military is going to threaten other countries, he needs to have a military victory to point to,” he added. “He certainly hasn’t got it yet, and I don’t know what it holds in store for him. So the bad news is that I think this failure actually contributes to their determination in the Kremlin to continue this conflict until they can achieve success that justifies the invasion in the first place.”
With mail wires