Putin "Isolated and Distrustful": Report Reveals Apparently Catastrophic Ukraine Situation in Kremlin
Created: 2022-12-27 04:23
By: Richard Strobl
According to a US report, Vladimir Putin is not well informed about the situation in Ukraine, even in the Kremlin.
© IMAGO/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin Pool
How well is Putin informed by Kremlin advisers about the Ukraine war?
A report from the USA paints a bad picture.
Moscow – In the Ukraine war, Russia has at times clearly gone on the defensive.
Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin forbade his troops to retreat.
Days later, in a hopeless situation, they withdrew anyway.
The question arises: How well is Russia's ruler in the Kremlin really provided with information by his advisers?
Washington had already announced in March that it suspected that Putin's advisers were not properly briefed on setbacks and failures in Ukraine.
The consequences of the sanctions against their own country are said not to be really clear to the Kremlin rulers either.
Now, a Wall Street Journal
report puts
its finger on that wound again.
According to their own statements, the journalists of the US specialist magazine have been examining the information chains in the Kremlin for months and have also received insider information.
The results of the research show a catastrophic picture of the situation.
Putin's adviser fiasco in the Ukraine war: "Information he wants to hear"
"Russia's president has set up a power structure that is supposed to give him the information he wants to hear and that feeds his miscalculations in the Ukraine war," says the article, which was first reported in Germany by
Der Spiegel
.
Accordingly, Vladimir Putin receives a written update on the situation in the Ukraine war every morning at seven o'clock.
However, the information in this briefing was embellished, setbacks were mentioned but downplayed - while progress was emphasized.
To make matters worse, according to the report, Putin himself refused to use the Internet to search for information for a long time.
He feared digital surveillance.
That makes the morning briefings his only real source of information.
Russia without a leader in the Ukraine war?
Putin receives old and wrong information
In addition, information that reaches Putin is often already out of date.
According to the report, this is due to the information chain that ends in the Kremlin: the military pass on news from the front to the domestic secret service FSB.
He prepares the information and then passes it on to experts from Putin's Security Council.
Its chairman Nikolai Patrushev then forwards the information to Putin.
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According to
Bild
, ex-FSB boss Patrushev - who has known Putin for decades - is exactly one of the siloviki who first convinced the Kremlin ruler of the invasion of Ukraine.
Accordingly, he has an interest in submitting positive war reports to Putin.
The Kremlin itself contradicts these statements, as the Wall Street Journal writes.
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Putin 'Isolated and Suspicious'
However, according to the US report, even Putin is now at least partially aware of the situation.
Direct orders from Putin to the military in Ukraine, in violation of the chain of command, have repeatedly caused a stir.
These are said to be a result of the Kremlin ruler's uncertainty about being able to rely on the statements of his advisers.
Putin is "isolated and suspicious," writes the WSJ.
The report cites another interesting example of the advisers' dealings with Putin: a pollster is said to have submitted a poll after the start of the war, according to which fewer Russians supported the invasion than expected.
The Kremlin advisors then replied: "Vladimir Vladimirovich does not need to be excited now."
