Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s security council, says eight Russian commanders have been fired since the start of the conflict amid heavy losses on the battlefield.
Another report alleged that Putin is annoyed 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 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 advice made the military to attack Ukraine less than optimally leading to Russia suffering much higher casualties than it expected in its attack – a war which has exceeded two weeks.
Danilov said Putin thought capital city Kyiv would fall within two to three days which made him send in light forces to seize key targets during the opening days.
‘It hasn’t happened and never will,’ he said.
Danilov 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.
Also in the report, another theory is that the organisation did gather good intelligence but was simply too afraid to tell Putin the truth, instead doctoring their reports to appease him.
‘The problem is that it is too risky for superiors to tell Putin what he doesn’t want to hear, so they tailor their information,’ he said.
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.’
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, over two million Ukrainian refugees have fled, as cities face shortages of food, water, heat, and medicine – with some having to resort to melting snow for water.
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