@MiW here is translated article as requested. PART 1
How Putin Decided to Go to War
Why the war was doomed to failure from the start, what sources of information the president relied on before it began, and why no one in the FSB told the truth about the real state of affairs in Ukraine
05/16/2022
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The war in Ukraine has entered a protracted phase. But no matter how events develop further, it is already obvious now: the original plan for the invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine failed. In the third month of the war, the Russian armed forces have not achieved any of the goals originally announced by Vladimir Putin.
The Russian army was unable to quickly capture Kyiv, Chernigov, Kharkov and other large cities and, having suffered heavy losses, was forced to retreat.
The “second phase of the special operation” announced after that – that is, access to the administrative borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, as well as the capture of the south of Ukraine to Transnistria itself – judging by the news from the front (including from
propagandists ), is also going with difficulty. In some areas, the Russian army is slowly moving forward, but this advance is given with heavy losses; on others, for example, in the Kharkiv region, the armed forces of Ukraine (AFU)
pushed back the Russian army almost to the very border.
Despite the obvious setbacks at the front, the Russian military leadership keeps repeating that everything is going according to plan. But this is obviously not the case. “The task was set as follows: to take Mariupol in three days, Kyiv in five,” says an employee of the Russian special forces. All my sources agree with this: the Russian authorities were sure that the Russian army would not encounter serious resistance on its way. “Have you seen these shots with burned paddy wagons? They really thought that they would quickly take everything and then they would disperse the crowd with batons,” says the special forces officer.
Where did such confidence come from? “As ridiculous as it may sound, the decision to go to war was made by the most uninformed person who could make such a decision. President,” ironically my interlocutor.
Read this article to the end and you will learn:
- what the FSB intelligence reported to Putin before the start of the war, and why the Chekists are now “thirsty for the blood” of their colleagues from the fifth service;
- how the FSB “sold air” about the situation in Ukraine;
- why the President of Russia believed that victory would be easy for him;
- how the Kremlin finally broke away from reality.
Has Putin retained his connection to reality?
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer is so far the only EU leader Vladimir Putin has seen in person since the start of the war. The meeting took place in mid-April in Moscow. Nehammer later
told the American NBC channel about its results: “I think that he is now in his own military logic, you understand? .. He does not trust the international community. He accuses Ukrainians of genocide in Donbass. So for now he's in his world... But I think he believes he's winning the war."
Nehammer's phrase about Putin's "his own world" almost verbatim
repeats the words of Angela Merkel, said to Barack Obama in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea: "I'm not sure if Mr. Putin has retained touch with reality. He is in another world."
Many sources speak about Putin's "own world", including those who are personally acquainted with him; and we are talking not so much about mental health (although some interlocutors have concerns about this), but about the physical and informational isolation of the president.
During the pandemic, Putin has reduced the number of trips and face-to-face meetings, holding most of the events online. Before each face-to-face meeting with the president, people were forced to be locked up in strict quarantine for two weeks. Even press secretary Dmitry Peskov mostly saw his boss on the TV screen.
“At that time, if he received and saw someone, then no more than five people, the closest circle. It was very hard to work, all decisions were the last to be recognized, ”complained one of the Kremlin officials. “He has a limited number of people with him who are constantly nearby - adjutants who follow his schedule, time, to the point that they wake him up in the morning. There is a place to live in Ogarevo [the presidential residence]. The rest are not needed now, ”
confirmed the interlocutors of the BBC Russian service.
This regime, in fact, is still preserved: during the war, Putin appeared in public a few times. Such isolation has made it almost impossible for the president - already distinguished by suspiciousness and excessive suspicion - to convey an alternative point of view - one that did not coincide with the opinion of the special services. As a result, Putin, when deciding to invade Ukraine, relied mainly on the reports of his former colleagues, including the FSB’s “big fifth service” (it is so called to distinguish it from the fifth services within the smaller FSB units).
Who works in the fifth service and what did she report to Putin before the war in Ukraine?
"Air Sellers"
The Fifth Service is one of the most closed in the FSB, it is sometimes called intelligence because it specializes in collecting information inside Russia and in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The key subdivision of the service is the department of operational information, which includes various departments specializing in their areas, and a department that deals with Ukraine.
The Fifth Service is headed by the influential General Sergei Beseda. His first deputy and at the same time the head of the department is Georgy Grishaev. It was he and his deputy Dmitry Milyutin who were directly responsible for the information that was reported to the Russian leadership about the situation in Ukraine (although, as my interlocutors stipulate, the certificates were still written and written by the “opera” - the leadership’s fault is that it did not check anything and took on faith any convenient information).
At the beginning of the war, many media even
reported that Beseda and his colleagues were arrested because their information about Ukraine was not true. However, four sources said this was not the case. “Conversation is untouchable. There are several services in the FSB, whose leaders are equated with the deputy director: for example, this is the fifth service and the first (
engaged in counterintelligence. -
Approx. ed. ). They don’t jail them,” says a friend of Beseda’s.
But inside the FSB today no one hides the fact that there are big questions about the work of the fifth service. Moreover, many colleagues are thirsty for the blood of their colleagues from this service and are waiting for criminal cases to be initiated against them. “They are sellers of air,” says a former FSB officer about his colleagues. “They thought, misinterpreted, and sometimes fantasized, and the management gladly believed in it,” another former employee echoes him. “For example, they wrote that the regions of Ukraine live separately from the authorities in Kyiv, and as soon as they push, the regions will run towards Russia.”
“There is no level of professionalism there. People who did not know how to work were poured there. Not everyone went yet, because there is a swamp. We came across cases when we brought information on one of the CIS countries to the Conversations service, and the profile employees did not recognize the names of the main officials of this country, did not understand who these people were. They had to explain,” says the FSB officer.
ria.ru
