Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is falling apart, as his very own armed forces are sabotaging his plans, according to the United Kingdom’s spy chief on Thursday.
Jeremy Fleming, who is the head of Government Communication Headquarters, said that Putin had “massively misjudged” both the capabilities of Russian forces and the resiliency of Ukrainians to fight for their country.
“It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people,” Fleming said during a speech in Australia. “He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanize. He underplayed the economic consequences of the sanctions regime, and he overestimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory.”
Fleming added that Putin’s men are “short of weapons and morale,” making them refuse to carry out orders and sabotaging their equipment such as by “accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.”
The spy chief went on to claim that the Russian leader is surrounded by “yes men” who are afraid of speaking the truth to him, downplaying how poorly Russian troops are performing on the battlefield.
President Joe Biden on Thursday said that it was still unclear exactly how much of Putin’s advisors were giving him false information, but believes that there is currently a rift between the Russian President and his inner circle.
“There’s a lot of speculation,” Biden said. “I’m not saying this with a certainty: he seems to be self-isolating. And there’s some indication he has fired or put under house arrest some of his advisers.”
“But I don’t want to put that much stock in that at this time because we don’t have that much hard evidence,” he added.
In response to these claims, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the U.S. and its allies are the ones in the dark about Putin and his advisers.
“They just don’t understand what happens in the Kremlin, they don’t understand President Putin, they don’t understand the decision-making mechanism, and they don’t understand the way we work,” Peskov said.
“To our regret — and, in fact, this probably even causes our concern — it turns out that neither the State Department nor the Pentagon has real information about what is happening in the Kremlin,” the spokesman added.
Meanwhile, former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said that he doesn’t “buy that analysis” and suggested that the “continued corruption in the Russian military” was to blame for the discontent among Putin’s armed forces.
“I don’t think there’s a government in human history, that I’m aware of, where one of the top leader’s advisers was not perfectly prepared to say that another top adviser had made a complete mess of things,” Bolton said.
“I think the disastrous performance of the Russian military has caused such a reputational blow that I think it’s an added reason why Putin has no incentive, from his perspective, to negotiate,” he added.
