Agency Report
Furious Vladimir Putin is said to have sacked eight top generals in anger over the slow pace of the Ukraine invasion.
Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s security council, said eight Russian commanders have been fired since the start of the conflict amid heavy losses on the battlefield.
Putin is also said to be enraged with leaders of the FSB security service for handing him intelligence suggesting that Ukraine was weak, riddled with neo-Nazi groups, and would give up easily if attacked.
Philip Ingram, a former senior British intelligence officer, told The Times, according to UK Metro, that Putin is obviously ‘very angry’ and is blaming his intelligence agencies.
‘He blames them for seeding him the advice that led to the poor decision-making in Ukraine,’ he said.
That poor decision making has led to Russia suffering much higher casualties than it expected in its attack, which has now been going on for two weeks.
Moscow anticipated little resistance when it sent in light forces backed by airstrikes to seize key targets during the opening days.
Danilov said Putin thought capital city Kyiv would fall within two to three days.
‘It hasn’t happened and never will,’ he said.
The security head said ‘desperate’ Moscow has ‘now switched to a different tactic’ by changing leadership.
‘They had about 8 generals removed from their posts because they did not complete the task,’ he told state TV.
‘Now new ones have been appointed. We clearly understand what is happening in the Russian Federation. I can say that they are desperate.’
Ukraine believes Russia has lost up to 12,000 men in a fortnight. European intelligence puts it lower – between 6,000 and 9,000 – and US lower still, at up to 3,000.
Whichever proves accurate, it is almost certainly more than Putin anticipated when he invaded his southern neighbour.
According to the latest intelligence assessment from the UK, a huge Russian convoy advancing towards Kyiv has made little progress in over a week and suffered heavy losses from the Ukrainian armed forces.
The Ministry of Defence also said there had been a decrease in Russian air activity, probably because it underestimated the effectiveness and endurance of Ukrainian air defence.
It is not clear exactly why Russian intelligence received ahead of the operation in Ukraine was so poor.
Andrei Soldatov, who has monitored the Russian secret service for two decades, told The Times that one possibility is that the organisation is simply not fit for purpose.
‘The tailoring probably takes place somewhere between the rank of colonel and general in the FSB.’
It comes after it was claimed Kremlin officials are ‘privately denouncing’ Putin’s ‘clusterf**k’ invasion.
Russian journalist Farida Rustamova, who was well-connected in government circles before fleeing the country amid a crackdown on dissent, has alleged that officials in Moscow never believed their leader would go to war.
They are now said to be making ‘apocalyptic’ forecasts about the weeks and months ahead as fighting grinds on and punitive sanctions isolate the country.
When asked how Russian politicians were reacting to the crisis, one source told Rustamova: ‘They’re carefully enunciating the word clusterf**k.
‘No one is rejoicing. Many understand that this is a mistake, but in the course of doing their duty they come up with explanations in order to somehow come to terms with it.’
