Vladimir Putin ‘misled’ by Russian military, advisers ‘too scared’ to tell him the truth about Ukraine invasion

Vladimir Putin is reportedly running the invasion of Ukraine half-blind, as his own advisers are “too afraid” to tell him the truth about the war.

Vladimir Putin has been misled by his own military, with the Russian President’s advisers too scared to tell him how badly the war in Ukraine is going, according to Western intelligence.

“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said today.

“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.”

US intelligence believes Mr Putin “didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine”, an extraordinary fact that illustrates “a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information” to him.

A senior European diplomat echoed that assessment, telling Reuters that Mr Putin “thought things were going better than they were”.

“That’s the problem with surrounding yourself with yes men, or only sitting with them at the end of a very long table,” the diplomat said.

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Putin meeting with his Defence Minister and Chief of the General Staff at one such ‘very long table’. Picture: Alexei Nikolsky/TASS via Getty Images

White House director of communications Kate Bedingfield. Picture: Nicholas Kamm/AFP

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the matter during a media briefing in Algeria overnight.

“One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that we don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or have the ability to speak truth to power. And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia,” Mr Blinken said.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, US Defence Department press secretary John Kirby said it was “discomforting” that Russia’s leader “may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing”.

“If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring?” Admiral Kirby said, alluding to the ongoing but so far fruitless peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian diplomats.

“The other thing is, you don’t know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news.”

Russia President Vladimir Putin’s advisers are reportedly “too scared” to tell him the truth about the Ukraine invasion.

Yascha Mounk, a political scientist and professor of international affairs, described the poor information being provided to Putin as “one of the classic pitfalls of dictatorship”.

“At some point, the leader is so cut off from real life, and his advisers so afraid to tell him the truth, that he has no idea what is going on – even about such vital questions like whether you are, you know, winning the war,” Prof Mounk wrote on social media.

“Vladimir Putin loves to go on about how decadent Western societies are … nothing quite says decadence like losing a war you started without even knowing it, because your own advisers are enveloping you in a comforting cocoon.”

While Russian propaganda continues to insist the invasion is proceeding as planned and meeting its goals, there have been indications that Mr Putin is frustrated, even if he doesn’t know the full scale of his military’s failure.

Ukraine estimates he has sacked and replaced at least eight generals since the war started. In the most recent change to the military’s leadership, he promoted Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya, to the rank of Lieutenant-General.

An odd thing: Kadyrov was one of a tiny number of people in Russia who knew about the invasion well in advance – unlike seemingly the entire cabinet and even several security officials. The Chechens failed in early special ops and since then have mostly been posing for selfies https://t.co/uIVpBb0zqz

— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 30, 2022

Multiple senior officials, including Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, have vanished from public view in recent weeks. And earlier this month, reports emerged that Mr Putin was furious at Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, for providing him with poor intelligence.

Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and expert on the country’s security services, told The Times it was possible the FSB’s intelligence on the ground in Ukraine was actually “very good”, but not accurately conveyed to Mr Putin.

“The problem is that it’s too risky for people to tell Putin what he doesn’t want to hear, so they tailor their information,” he explained.

Mr Putin is not the only Russian feeling misled, of course. Another European diplomat who spoke to Reuters said Russian conscripts were deceived by their superiors, who told them they would be taking part in training exercises, not an invasion.

“They were misled, badly trained, and then arrived to find old Ukrainian women who looked like their grandmothers yelling at them to go home.”

With the Russian state propaganda machine in overdrive, Putin remains popular, despite the military disaster in Ukraine. Picture: Ramil Sitdikov/AFP

Despite all of this, Mr Putin’s approval rating in Russia appears to have risen significantly since the invasion began.

The Levada Centre – a polling organisation sufficiently independent to be deemed a “foreign agent” by the Russian government – has published new data showing approval for Putin at 83 per cent, up from 69 per cent in January.

More than two-thirds of Russians told the survey they believed Russia was headed in the right direction, up from 52 per cent a month ago.

The obvious caveat here is that Russia’s government punishes those who speak out against the war, which has a chilling effect on dissent.

And, as pointed out by CNN global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga, this data “reinforces the power of propaganda”.

“The majority of Russians now only have access to state media, which is not showing the true nature of the war, the indiscriminate attacks and killings by Russians, and it definitely isn’t showing the number of dead Russian soldiers,” she explained.

The Russian people are not getting a full picture of the war. Neither, it seems, is Mr Putin.