A hubristic and isolated leader, beset by biases and skewed information, pressed forward with the calamitous decision to invade Ukraine without consulting his full cohort of advisers.
to focus his military campaign on Ukraine’s east in what is widely seen as “Plan B,” after his forces failed to topple Ukraine’s government or wrest control of its biggest cities. All the while, questions are mounting about how a Russian leader steeped in security policy and known for railing against the folly of regime-change wars could have sleepwalked into a such a strategic morass.
The Russian leader notoriously doesn’t use a smartphone and rarely accesses the Internet. He spent years snuffing out Russian independent news and erecting an authoritarian system of government devoid of constructive feedback or dissent. By early this year, according to U.S. and European officials, he was operating in an echo chamber, surrounded by advisers who, according to Galeotti, “had learned you do not bring bad news to the czar’s table.
Russia got Ukraine wrong “because this was totally a Putin-directed operation,” said a U.S. official who specializes in Russia and like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.‘An enormous amount of arrogance’ “He has an unwavering belief in his ability to control events,” a senior NATO intelligence official said.
Where Russia relies primarily on its foreign intelligence service, the SVR, to collect information about countries such as the United States and China, when it comes to countries in the “near abroad” including Ukraine, Moscow enlists the FSB, primarily a domestic intelligence service.
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