War in Ukraine: CIA attests Putin four serious mistakes - indications of attack plans as early as April 2021?
Created: 03/10/2022 10:09 am
By: Stefan Sessler
According to the CIA, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin miscalculated.
© picture alliance/dpa/Pool Sputnik Kremlin/AP/Andrei Gorshkov
According to the head of the US foreign intelligence agency CIA, Vladimir Putin miscalculated the war in Ukraine.
The CIA makes four points of this.
Berlin/Washington – The escalation in Ukraine was apparently planned well in advance.
Vladimir Putin has worked specifically to make Germany and Europe vulnerable to blackmail.
According to a report by the
ZDF
magazine Frontal, Gazprom stopped offering short-term contracts in April last year.
The Russian state-owned company throttled deliveries and stopped filling up the group's own gas storage facilities in Germany.
Ukraine war: Putin brought Germany into the gas jam on purpose
The markets quickly panicked - the price for a megawatt hour of gas increased ninefold in just a few months.
Putin intentionally put Germany in a gas jam.
It was part of his war against Ukraine.
Due to the dependence on Russian energy, he apparently wanted to take the Federal Republic out of the game.
That was Putin's calculation - which apparently does not work out completely.
It's not the only misjudgment the man in the Kremlin made.
The head of the US foreign intelligence agency CIA, William Burns, has just predicted gloomy weeks.
"I think Putin is angry and frustrated right now," he told the US Congress.
"He will probably go one step further and try to crush the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties."
War in Ukraine: Deep personal conviction for Putin
A sustainable solution for Putin is not in sight, said the CIA chief.
It is not foreseeable how he could maintain a puppet regime or a pro-Russian leadership in Ukraine, which he is trying to install against the massive resistance of the Ukrainian population.
For Putin, the attack on Ukraine is a matter of deep personal conviction.
"He's had an explosive mix of grief and ambition for many years," Burns said.
“He has created a system in which his own circle of advisors is becoming ever narrower.
Covid has made this circle even tighter.
And it's a system where questioning or challenging one's judgment isn't proving career-enhancing."
CIA: Putin made four big mistakes
In his decision to attack, the Russian president made a complete miscalculation, the head of the secret service argued.
According to the CIA, the Russian president made four major strategic errors.
Putin thought Ukraine was weak and easily intimidated (mistake 1).
On the other hand, Putin probably suspected that Europeans, especially the French and Germans, were distracted and risk-averse by the elections in France and the change in leadership in Germany (Error 2).
"Third, he believed he had made his economy sanction-proof."
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In addition, the Kremlin chief was confident that he had modernized his military and that it was capable of achieving a quick victory at minimal cost (Error 4).
All of these assessments turned out to be wrong.
(sts/dpa)