Putin being misled by fearful advisers, US says
Russian President Vladimir
Putin is being misled by advisers who are too scared to tell him how badly the
war in Ukraine is going, the White House says.
Meanwhile, British
intelligence says Russian troops in Ukraine are demoralised, short of equipment
and refusing to carry out orders.
Mr Putin is also not
being told about the full impact of sanctions on the Russian economy, the White
House said.
The Kremlin said the US had a "total misunderstanding" of the situation.
Mr Putin's chief
spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists: "They simply don't understand
what's happening in the Kremlin, they don't understand President Putin, they
don't understand how decisions are taken and they don't understand the style of
our work."
This was worrying, he added, "because such total misunderstanding leads to wrong decisions which have bad consequences."
Earlier, White House
spokesperson Kate Bedingfield said the US had information that Mr Putin
"felt misled by the Russian military" and this had resulted in
"persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership".
"Putin's war has
been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and
increasingly isolated on the world stage," she said.
Pentagon spokesman John
Kirby called the assessments "discomforting", because an uninformed
Putin could result in a "less than faithful" effort at ending the
conflict through peace negotiations.
"The other thing is, you don't know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news," he said.
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