Frustrated Putin may order escalation of violence
in Ukraine, U.S. officials say
The U.S. has solid intelligence that Putin is
directing unusual bursts of anger at people in his inner circle over the state
of the military campaign, officials said.
March 1,
2022, 2:38 AM CET
By Ken
Dilanian, Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce
U.S.
intelligence agencies have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin is
growing increasingly frustrated by his military struggles in Ukraine and may
see his only option as doubling down on violence, current and former U.S.
officials briefed on the matter told NBC News.
As the
Russian economy teeters under unprecedented global sanctions and his
purportedly superior military force appears bogged down, Putin has lashed out
in anger at underlings, even as he remains largely isolated from the Kremlin in
part because of concerns about Covid, the sources said.
“This is
somebody that’s clearly been caught off guard by the size of the Ukrainian
resistance,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman of the Intelligence
Committee, said on MSNBC. “He has isolated himself. He’s not been in the
Kremlin very much. ... You’ve got less and less inputs, and these inputs are
from sycophants."
He added:
"I do worry that he’s been backed into a corner. I do worry that there is
no obvious exit ramp.”
Western
intelligence agencies have good visibility into Putin right now and are closely
watching his moves for any significant behavioral changes, several current and
former officials said. Four U.S. officials said there is no intelligence saying
he is mentally unstable, but they said he has displayed a different pattern of
behavior from in the past.
The U.S.
has solid intelligence that Putin is frustrated and directing unusual bursts of
anger at people in his inner circle over the state of the military campaign and
the worldwide condemnation of his actions, one former and two current U.S.
officials briefed on the intelligence said.
That is
unusual, they say, because Putin, a former intelligence officer, usually keeps
his emotions in check.
“He is no
longer the same cold-blooded, clear-eyed dictator that he was in 2008,” former
CIA Director John Brennan said.
A Western
diplomat said Putin appeared to be increasingly insulated and misinformed.
“The main
concern is the information he’s getting and how isolated he is. The isolation
is a really big concern,” the diplomat said. “We don’t believe he has a
realistic understanding of what’s going on.”
Sen. Marco
Rubio, R-Fla., the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, said on
Twitter that “the old Putin was a cold blooded but calculating killer. This new
Putin is even more dangerous.”
Warner,
who, like Rubio, receives special briefings from the CIA, said he remained
concerned about a massive cyberattack on Ukraine, which the Russians have not
yet been willing or able to do.
Rubio also
expressed that concern on Twitter, in stark language.
“DANGER,”
Rubio tweeted. “#Putin’s legitimacy built on image as the strong leader who
restored #Russia to superpower after the disasters of the 90’s. Now the economy
is in shambles & the military is being humiliated & his only tools to
reestablish power balance with the West is cyber & nukes.”
Brennan
said he shared those worries. Based on the release of accurate intelligence
predicting Putin’s pre-invasion moves, Brennan said he believes U.S. and
Western intelligence agencies have good insights into his decision-making
processes.
“This was
just such a bad, bad miscalculation on Putin’s part,” Brennan said. “He’s never
faced something like this before. I’m sure he’s lashing out at advisers,
ministers and others — there may be an emotional spiral here. He’s suffered two
black eyes, a bloody nose and a series of punches. He is being crippled on the
battlefield and the financial front, and he has no good options.”
A
spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to comment.
Apart from
heavy shelling around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Russian forces so far have
not unleashed the kind of concentrated artillery and bombing campaign they have
employed in previous military actions, said Michael Kofman, an analyst at the
think tank CNA. The Russian military is “an artillery army first, and it has
used a fraction of its available fires in this war thus far,” Kofman tweeted.
“Sadly, I
expect the worst is yet ahead, and this war could get a lot more ugly,” he
said.
Condoleezza
Rice, who met a number of times with Putin as secretary of state in the
administration of President George W. Bush, said Sunday on Fox News that she,
too, sees a different Putin.
He was
always a “calculating and cold” former KGB operative, she said, but today, “he
seems erratic.”
“There is
an ever-deepening, delusional rendering of history,” she said. “It was always a
kind of victimology of what had happened to them, but now it goes back to
blaming Lenin for the foundation of Kyiv in Ukraine. So he’s descending into
something that I personally haven’t seen before.”
Sen. Jeanne
Shaheen, D-N.H., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that
“Putin’s severe miscalculations are going to cost him a grave price,” adding
that he “has become a political pariah to those he foolishly believed would
support his unprovoked, premeditated invasion of Ukraine.”
On the
fifth day of its invasion, a U.S. defense official said, the Russian military
has not yet been able to achieve air superiority over the country, and the
Ukrainian military still has significant air and missile defense systems that
are viable and available to them. That has surprised most analysts, who
believed the Russians could quickly overwhelm Ukraine’s aging air defense
systems.
But
officials said the number of portable air defense missiles Ukraine has
accumulated, including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles transferred from Baltic
countries, has complicated Russian efforts.
There were
multiple reports Monday that Ukraine had been using its complement of Turkish
drones to destroy Russian vehicles on the ground. The small drones, which can
hover over targets and strike them with missiles, were used to devastating
effect in 2020 by Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia.
The defense
official said the Russian invaders were struggling to maintain stocks of fuel
and other supplies, which is one reason their main advance on Kyiv has bogged
down. The Russians advanced only about 3 miles in 24 hours and were still about
15.5 miles outside central Kyiv, the official said.
Putin badly
underestimated Ukraine’s determination and did not count on a unified, tough
response from the West, said Alexander Vershbow, a former ambassador to Russia
who was deputy secretary general of NATO from 2012 to 2016.
“It’s not a
failed invasion, but certainly a faltering one,” Vershbow said.
With
Russian forces struggling to push deeper into Ukraine against a determined
resistance and Russia’s economy under unprecedented international pressure,
Putin’s remaining options are all unattractive and risky, experts and former
U.S. officials said.
Putin could
order his military to use brute force to seize Kyiv and other cities by
employing indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas. That was
Russia’s approach in its air war in Syria, where it supported Iranian-backed
fighters and Syrian regime troops, and in the Second Chechen War in 1999 and
2000.
In
Chechnya, several thousand civilians were killed when Russian troops laid siege
to the capital, Grozny. Human rights groups accused Russia of war crimes and
the targeting of civilians in both Syria and Chechnya.
When he ran
for president in 2000 and won, Putin championed the war in Chechnya, portraying
himself as a leader who could restore order and crush unrest.
“The next
stage may be the scorched-earth tactics that we saw in Chechnya and Syria,
which would mean much more death and destruction,” said Vershbow, who is now a
distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “I don’t think they have too many
scruples when it comes to this.”
Rubio
tweeted Monday that there were “growing signs #Putin has ordered a medieval
siege of #Kyiv,” which he said would involve cutting off food, fuel and power.
“We need to
start thinking about what we can & are willing to do to prevent such a
barbaric crime,” he added.
Ken
Dilanian
Ken
Dilanian is a correspondent covering intelligence and national security for the
NBC News Investigative Unit.
Carol E.
Lee
Carol E.
Lee is an NBC News correspondent.
Courtney Kube
Courtney
Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC
News Investigative Unit.
Dan De Luce
Dan De Luce
is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
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