Russian President Vladimir Putin is the victim of a misinformation campaign – from his own military.
A U.S. official told NBC News that Russia’s Ministry of Defense has “misinformed” their ironfisted ruler about “how badly the Russian military is performing.”
“Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian president,” the official said to NBC News. “We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.”
Business Insider reports that Russian elites are looking to scapegoat one another:
Russian elites will likely blame each other for Russia’s “disastrous progress” in its more-than-month-long war with Ukraine, Western officials said on Tuesday.
“It’s also likely that within the Russian system various elements are going to be blaming each other for the lack of success” in Ukraine, a Western official speaking on the condition of anonymity told reporters.
The official added, “People are going to be being quite defensive about their own failures, and I think, looking to point the finger at others.”
Last week, The New York Times reported on growing tension among Russia’s leadership:
The failures in Ukraine have started to create fissures within Russian leadership, according to Andrei Soldatov, an author and expert on Russia’s military and security services. The top Russian intelligence official in charge of overseeing the recruitment of spies and diversionary operations in Ukraine has been put under house arrest along with his deputy, Mr. Soldatov said. Even Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, who vacations with Mr. Putin and has been spoken of as a potential presidential successor, has suffered a loss of standing, according to Mr. Soldatov’s sources.
“It looks like everybody is on edge,” Mr. Soldatov said.
Mr. Soldatov’s claims could not be independently verified, and some independent experts have challenged them. But Mr. Shoigu has not been shown meeting with Mr. Putin in person since Feb. 27, when he and his top military commander, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, sat at the end of a long table as Mr. Putin, on the opposite end, ordered them to place Russia’s nuclear forces at a higher level of readiness.