Putin’s intervention in combat events and the deaths of the generals show how poorly Russian command structures work in the war.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has in recent weeks become more and more involved in the decision-making of the war of aggression in Ukraine, says the person quoting American official sources The New York Times -lehti.
According to the newspaper, Putin has refused the request of Russian commanders to withdraw troops from the area of the strategically important city of Kherson to the east of the Dnieper River, so that Russia could save men and equipment from a Ukrainian counterattack.
For the commanders, it is about the soldiers’ lives and the army’s ability to fight successfully in the future, but for Putin there is much more to Kherson in southern Ukraine.
in the Kherson region is currently being organized like the other three regions, “referendums” where the regions “decide” on their desire to join Russia.
Read more: Staging referendums requires creativity and a touch of reality from Russia
“Referendums” in Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia were announced on Tuesday, while on Wednesday Russia launched a “partial campaign” to clean up its poorly run war and send more men to the front to replace the tens of thousands who died earlier.
Withdrawing from Kherson would be a huge humiliation for Putin, as it is the first city that Russia managed to capture in the war of aggression launched last February. For Ukraine, recapturing the city would be a great victory.
The According to New York Times sources, Putin’s refusal to withdraw troops in Kherson has eaten away at the morale of the Russian troops, because the Ukrainians have managed to cut off the Russian supply chains and the soldiers fear being left ill-equipped at the mercy of the Ukrainians.
According to The New York Times, relations between Putin and military commanders have been difficult since the beginning of the major offensive. Some commanders are said to have questioned the strategy used in the failed attempt to take Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, last February: far too few troops and military equipment were allocated to the massive effort.
Read more: Putin faces an increasingly strong opposition, and it comes from the extreme right
The Washington Post magazine, on the other hand said in August in the extensive report he published, that Putin received from the Russian intelligence service FSB a far too rosy picture of how Kiev and the leaders of Ukraine could be overthrown.
According to the newspaper, the FSB agents were preparing for a quick jubilant march to Kyiv and were already looking at apartments for themselves in the city where Russia was preparing to run Ukraine through a puppet regime. At least two different configurations for the puppet government had already been drawn on paper.
CNN-canva said on Thursday citing two intelligence sources that Putin has taken to giving orders directly to frontline commanders.
The same sources said that signals intelligence would have learned how Russian officers argue with each other or complain to their relatives and friends on the home front about bad decisions made in Moscow.
Also information from western intelligence sources should be treated with caution, as their interest is to create an image of chaotic decision-making in Russia. On the other hand, the creation of a chaotic impression is not only based on the views spread by the agents, but on information flooding in from everywhere.
The inaction of the Russian chain of command has been alarming since the beginning of the major attack. Ukraine has said that it has succeeded in killing numerous generals since last February.
Russia has admitted the deaths of four generals, which is also an exceptionally high number. The death of a general on the battlefield often means that they need to go closer to the front than usual, possibly as a sign of distrust for lower-level commanders.
Putin’s meddling directly in the field events would further underline how confused the chain of command would be and how the mutual trust between the president and the commanders would be put to the test.
At the end of August, British military intelligence reported that Putin had ousted the defense minister Sergei Shoigun decision-making, but at least this week, Šoigu has been in public talking about the “partial motion launch”, one of the biggest turning points in the war since February.
According to British intelligence, Russian officers and soldiers laugh at Shoigu, whose military expertise is not valued because he has spent much of his career in the construction sector.
CNN-kanavan sources say there are now major disagreements within Russia’s military leadership over where troops should be mostly concentrated to stop Ukrainian counterattacks. It seems that the biggest stakes are currently loaded in the Kherson region.
Read more: Russia’s motion does not seem “partial” – This is known about it
Russian troops destroyed last week with a missile attack on the dam on the Inhulets River to make it difficult for Ukrainian forces to counterattack. The river divides the Russian-conquered territory of the Kherson region into two parts.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, have succeeded in blowing up Russian ammunition depots and bridges important for Russian maintenance. Ukraine has managed to capture some villages in the Kherson region, but the counter-offensive that started at the end of August has progressed possibly slower than planned.
On the other hand, in recent weeks, Ukraine has succeeded in capturing significant areas in the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine. British newspaper by sources interviewed by The Guardian according to Kherson, the attack launched with great noise was a disinformation campaign to prepare for the recapture of the Kharkiv region.
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank (CSIS) on Thursday according to the review in any case, the situation is that Kherson has been stuck in all-consuming battles, which have so far seen far fewer territorial conquests than in the direction of Kharkiv.
According to CSIS, Ukrainian intelligence and special forces have carried out operations in addition to traditional warfare, in which they have sabotaged infrastructure important to the Russian armed forces and assassinated persons collaborating with the Russians in the Kherson region.