Russian Military Slog in Ukraine a ‘dreadful mess’ for Putin; Reported Detention of Russian Spy Boss Shows Tension Over Stalled Ukraine Invasion; Ukrainian Forces Try to Hold Mariupol as Combat Reaches City Streets; A 5th Russian General is Killed; and LIVE UPDATES
Russian military slog in Ukraine a ‘dreadful mess’ for Putin:
The signs are abundant of how Ukraine frustrated Vladimir Putin’s hopes for a swift victory and how Russia’s military proved far from ready for the fight.
A truck carrying Russian troops crashes, its doors blown open by a rocket-propelled grenade. Foreign-supplied drones target Russian command posts. Orthodox priests in trailing vestments parade Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag in defiance of their Russian captors in the occupied city of Berdyansk.
Russia has lost hundreds of tanks, many left charred or abandoned along the roads, and its death toll is on a pace to outstrip that of the country’s previous military campaigns in recent years.
Yet more than three weeks into the war, with Putin’s initial aim of an easy change in government in Kyiv long gone, Russia’s military still has a strong hand. With their greater might and stockpile of city-flattening munitions, Russian forces can fight on for whatever the Russian president may plan next, whether leveraging a negotiated settlement or brute destruction, military analysts say.
Despite all the determination of Ukraine’s people, all the losses among Russia’s forces and all the errors of Kremlin leaders, there is no sign that the war will soon be over. Even if Putin fails to take control of his neighbor, he can keep up the punishing attacks on its cities and people. Ukraine’s president said Russia is trying to starve Ukraine’s cities into submission and that Putin is deliberately creating “a humanitarian catastrophe.”
“His instinct will be always to double down because he’s got himself into a dreadful mess, a huge strategic blunder,” said Michael Clarke, former head of the British-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank. —>READ MORE HERE
Reported Detention of Russian Spy Boss Shows Tension Over Stalled Ukraine Invasion, U.S. Officials Say:
Recriminations and finger-pointing have begun within Russia’s spy and defense agencies, as the campaign that Moscow expected to culminate in a lightning seizure of Ukraine’s capital has instead turned into a costly and embarrassing morass, U.S. officials said.
The blame game, which includes the detention of at least one senior Russian intelligence official, doesn’t appear to pose any immediate threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on power, but the U.S. officials are watching the machinations closely.
A U.S. official described as credible reports that the commander of the FSB intelligence agency’s unit responsible for Ukraine had been placed under house arrest.
The official, in an interview, also said bickering had broken out between the FSB and the Russian Ministry of Defense, two of the principal government units responsible for the preparation of the Feb. 24 invasion.
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns told Congress earlier this month that Mr. Putin had planned to seize Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv within two days, suggesting the Russian leader expected minimal resistance.
Russian forces instead encountered fierce Ukrainian counterattacks and their ground advance stalled this week amid mounting casualties. Four Russian generals have died, the Ukrainian government says. Some U.S. government calculations estimate as many as 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in action, though officials caution those are uncertain estimates.
Current and former U.S. officials say Russian intelligence agencies often shy away from telling their bosses bad news and may have reinforced Mr. Putin’s views, which he has expressed publicly, that Ukraine was a dysfunctional country whose leadership would rapidly collapse as some of its citizens welcomed Russian troops. —>READ MORE HERE
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