Putin fired eight senior generals.
Vladimir Putin has fired senior army generals and is angry with the FSB, as intelligence has failed with their strategy suffering a series of embarrassing losses in the early days of aggression in Ukraine.
Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s security council, said about eight Russian commanders had been fired since the beginning of the conflict, as Moscow tried to change strategy after failing so far.
Putin is also said to be outraged with the commanders of the FSB security service – which he used to run – where he had received reports that Ukraine was weak, full of neo-Nazi groups and would easily surrender if attacked.
Poor decision-making has caused Russia to suffer far greater casualties than expected in its attack, which has now continued for two weeks.
Reliable figures are hard to come by, but Ukraine believes Russia has lost up to 12,000 men in a week or two. European intelligence is down – between 6,000 and 9,000 – and the US is even lower, at 3,000.
Whichever is correct, it is almost certainly more than Putin had predicted when he launched the attack in the hope that the fighting would end within a few days.