Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0and, increasingly, by ordinary Russians too,\u201d Fleming said.<\/p>\nWestern security officials want to lay the responsibility for February\u2019s unprovoked invasion on Putin, who they characterise as a dominant, isolated leader who is making poor decisions partly because he no longer gets accurate information or honest opinions from his subordinates.<\/p>\n
As a result, Fleming said he believed that the failure to achieve a quick victory must be causing discord in the Kremlin. \u201cEven though we believe Putin\u2019s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, what\u2019s going on and the extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, US officials made a similar point, arguing that Putin was being misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging western sanctions have been.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,\u201d said Kate Bedingfield, director of communications at the White House.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cSo, it is increasingly clear that Putin\u2019s war has been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and increasingly isolated on the world stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby later agreed with the White House assessment: \u201cIt\u2019s [Putin\u2019s] military. It\u2019s his war. He chose it … the fact that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that\u2019s a little discomforting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of the invasion,\u00a0Putin held a bizarre meeting with his key advisers over whether to recognise\u00a0the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk. Some senior figures were clearly in fear of the president, who has led the country for 22 years, as he demanded each endorse the breakaway territories.<\/p>\n\n\n
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There were also growing signs, Fleming said, that Russian soldiers \u201cshort of weapons and morale\u201d were \u201crefusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft\u201d.<\/p>\n
No evidence was given to back up the air accident claim, although Whitehall sources said they were confident enough to allow Fleming to refer to it in the speech, partly to demonstrate to Russian insiders their knowledge of the military situation.<\/p>\n
The spy chief also warned\u00a0China\u00a0not to become \u201ctoo closely aligned\u201d with Russia as the war continues, the latest in a string of remarks by western leaders and officials aimed at trying to persuade Beijing not to supply Moscow with money and arms.<\/p>\n
Fleming said that Putin has made a clear \u201cstrategic choice\u201d to align with China before the fighting broke out, but that there remained underlying tensions between the two countries \u2013 and risks for both in trying to work together.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia understands that, long term, China will become increasingly strong militarily and economically. Some of their interests conflict; Russia could be squeezed out of the equation,\u201d Fleming is expected to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it is equally clear that a China that wants to set the rules of the road \u2013 the norms for a new global governance \u2013 is not well served by close alliance with a regime that wilfully and illegally ignores them all.\u201d<\/p>\n
source:theguardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vladimir Putin has made a strategic miscalculation in launching the invasion of Ukraine and his advisers are \u201cafraid to tell him the truth\u201d about the extent of his error, the boss of British spy agency GCHQ said in a speech on Thursday. Sir Jeremy Fleming, in a speech given in Australia, said the Russian leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":18884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5144,11363,6728,5522,3347,6263,5268,10767,5487,6193,5196,8057,9127,5488,10840,11166,5252,6213,3040,1152,9974,6194,9833,5572,5612,5340,6719,96,10917,3805,71,3457,5217,5659,3852,5713,5655,5618,10041,7422,8840,8122,7931,146,5180,5177,5555,5465,3080,6348,10885,694,5251,5761,5724,6571,2982,3954,10415,36,594],"class_list":["post-19195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accident","tag-aircraft","tag-alliance","tag-arms","tag-australia","tag-beijing","tag-british","tag-conflict","tag-counter-terrorism","tag-donetsk","tag-economy","tag-fear","tag-february","tag-gchq","tag-human-rights","tag-innocent","tag-invasion","tag-john-kirby","tag-kate","tag-kremlin","tag-leadership","tag-luhansk","tag-meeting","tag-military","tag-money","tag-moscow","tag-pentagon","tag-china","tag-poor","tag-president","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russian-soldiers","tag-russians","tag-sanctions","tag-security","tag-soldiers","tag-speech","tag-spy","tag-strong","tag-tension","tag-territories","tag-truth","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraines-president-volodymyr-zelensky","tag-ukrainian","tag-un","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us","tag-victory","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-war-crimes","tag-weapons","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-will","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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