The Cloak-and-Dagger War

By Alexander Ekemenah, Chief Analyst, NEXTMONEY

Executive Summary

1. The United States and the United Kingdom were eminently well-informed about the Russian intentions in Ukraine. Both countries started collecting their intelligence the moment Russia moved its troops and military equipment to Ukrainian borders, if not before that time, including the neighbouring Belarus. They obtained their intelligence mainly through the wealth or superabundance of satellite pictures that have been obtained by commercial and military satellites, including human intelligence assets on ground. For certain geopolitical and strategic reasons but mainly to forewarn Ukraine, United States and United Kingdom declassified these intelligence and made part of them public not only to embarrass Russia but also to also put it on the spot about its ugly intentions in Ukraine. Thus there can be no question of intelligence failure on the part of the United States and United Kingdom – even though the same cannot be said of other members of the Western Alliance or NATO especially France and Germany even when the US and UK were gracious enough to share their intelligence with them very well in advance before US and UK went to the public domain with their intel.
2. Contrariwise, Russia egregiously suffered from the well-known phenomenal malady of intelligence failure. First, Russia was not able to hide its intentions in Ukraine from the prying eyes of the rest of the world mainly its adversaries (the United States and the United Kingdom and/or NATO) to make them boil in the stew of speculations. Thus the rest of the world was sufficiently forewarned about its intentions in Ukraine through its own lack of tact.  Deception (in the classical intelligence context) could not avail Russia in this scenario. When finally Russia entered the Ukrainian territories in the invasion, its troop movements were most probably well-known in advance and the fore-knowledge was passed on to Ukraine which enabled to mount sufficient defense and later launch counter-offensive. It did not take long before Ukraine was able to stall Russian invasion and turned the table against the Russians in war of attrition or asymmetric war. Russia was indeed dealt deadly blows by Ukraine such as killing dozens of its Generals, scores of middle-ranking commanders, the sinking of the Russian naval flagship (Moskva) in the Black Sea, the destruction of its most advanced armored tank (T-90M) near Izyum, and the destruction of the Russian motorized rifle brigade at Siverskyi Donets River on May 11, where Russia lost about 400 soldiers, etc.
3. The cause of the Russian intelligence failure has been disclosed to be many which include first and foremost the type of strategic intelligence briefs fed to the Russian President Vladimir Putin by his security agencies which have been found out to be “sweetened” to his taste i.e. tailored to meet what Putin want to read and hear based on his hubris or chutzpah – and not what the objective reality as it is outside the enclave of the Kremlin. Second, Russian strategic intelligence also lack rigor and depth of analysis which failed to capture correctly the willingness of the Ukrainians to resist the Russian invasion even at heavy cost. The Russian intelligence failed to capture or predict the scope and depth of Ukrainian patriotism or nationalism that drove their resistance and sacrifices. Russian intelligence erroneously calculated that Ukrainians will willingly fall behind the invasion because they are presumably “brothers” and “sisters” and the big brother has come to liberate them the “militarists” and “Nazists” that are ruling them from Kyiv. Russian intelligence failure was the most outstanding in the 21^st century due to its wrong analysis, estimates, etc.
4. There is no known or acknowledged outstanding Russian military performance on the battlefield either at strategic, operational and tactical level. Even though Russia commands higher numerical strength in terms of troops and equipment and firepower, yet they have been severally humbled by being outmaneuvered by Ukrainian forces by ambushes, surprise attacks and battlefield adaptation (quick learning) in the use of Western-supplied weapons with operational and tactical brilliance, for example, the destruction of Russian T-90M armored tank by American-made Javelin anti-tank missile. The heroic resistance, despite being outnumbered, of the Ukrainians in the battle for Mariupol is well acknowledged in the broad context of Ukrainian fight-back.
5. In summary, Russia has lost the battle for supremacy in the intelligence and counterintelligence domain in the war in Ukraine.

Introduction

Much has been written on the role of intelligence in the war between Russia and Ukraine, those made available on the internet and those that are yet to make it there. Some of the write-ups are not fundamentally different from what has been known prior to the outbreak of the war between the two countries. What is probably new in most of the write-ups is the light shed on the specific role played or being played by intelligence in broad terms not only between the two combatants but also between Russia and the main supporters of Ukraine in the war i.e. the Western Alliance.

There are two broad schools of thought about the role of intelligence in the war.

The first is the school of thought that proclaimed intelligence failure on the part of Russia and to a lesser extent on the part of Ukraine, a failure that can be attributed to the poor performance of Russian military on the battlefield in Ukraine and the nature of the initial Ukrainian response to the Russian invasion.

The second school of thought mainly argues that intelligence failure alone does not account, for instance, for the visible Russian military performance in the battlefield in Ukraine; that added to the intelligence failure is the obvious poor political judgment on the part of the political leadership especially in Russia. 

There is a tacit agreement that the Western Alliance, mainly the United States and the United Kingdom, were well appraised of sufficient intelligence upon which it based its decision to support Ukraine against Russia in the war. In fact it could be argued with confidence that it is because the US and UK have more than enough intel on their tables that could make them to decide to go ahead with the public disclosure of this intel for a specific purpose of pushing Russia into a tight corner in its war in Ukraine. Western Alliance/NATO was not therefore accused by both schools of thought of intelligence failure. Rather they have abundant intel available to them from variety of sources. But what exactly the Western Alliance did with the available intel is another matter entirely. For instance, while the US and UK went ahead to make public disclosure of some of these intel, others like France and Germany chose to be reticent – because they are not sufficiently convinced about the intel on their decision-making tables.

The key question has been why has the war gone so badly for Russia in Ukraine contrary to the widely-held belief that Ukraine would fall within few weeks if not within days to the Russian invasion. Added to this question is what suddenly happened to widely-held notion about the superiority of Russian military might and/or firepower?

The cloak-and-dagger war of intelligence and counterintelligence between the United States and United Kingdom on the one hand and Russia on the other hand started before the actual invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022 when the United States and United Kingdom went on a disclosure spree about the Russian intentions in Ukraine. This cloak-and-dagger war is being fought both from the outer space and from the Situation Rooms in the White House and No 10, Downing Street.

The war in Ukraine, therefore, offered the opportunity to the United States and United Kingdom to even the scores with Russia for reasons that are yet to be critically interrogated and analyzed.

According to Ofek Riemer, a PhD candidate in international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, [i]ntelligence is intended first and foremost to help decision makers. Its role is to provide them with quality information that enables them to formulate policy vis-à-vis situational changes, and to guide the operational bodies on how to prepare for these changes to maintain political, economic, and military advantages. However, in recent years, thanks to the dramatic changes in the information and media environment and the rise in the importance and influence of social media and world public opinion on politics and on war in particular, intelligence itself becomes a tool for implementing policy and influencing reality.¹

The war in Ukraine marks a new climax in the public use of intelligence by states. The United States, the UK, and even the government of Ukraine have revealed intelligence information and assessments about Russia’s intentions and plans before and during the invasion. On the political level, the revelations contributed to shape a narrative that clearly marked Putin as an aggressor and Ukraine as a victim, and thus contributed to the consolidation of a strong and unified front against Russia. On the strategic level, the early revelation of Russian intentions did not deter the Kremlin. At the same time, on the tactical level, exposing the Russian plans, with an emphasis on covert operations, apparently prompted their cancellation and contributed to the undermining of Russian confidence, which may have an impact on the course of the war. While the public use of intelligence is not foreign to Israel, the case of Ukraine emphasizes several important lessons: the revelation of intelligence is limited in its ability to prevent a determined adversary from working to achieve objectives, though it may disrupt and delay plans and moves. Above all, disclosure helps to influence the agenda and shape domestic and international public opinion.²

The case study of public use of intelligence surrounding the crisis in Ukraine, alongside the cumulative conclusions from Israel’s experience, offers perspective and clarifies the advantages and disadvantages, and the costs and benefits, of applying this practice, which is gaining traction in international relations.³

The crisis surrounding Ukraine reflects one of the climaxes of this trend. In the months that preceded the Russian invasion and since it began, the public use of intelligence has become a central tool in the hands of the West and in the hands of the Ukrainian government itself for managing the crisis. Senior American officials, as quoted in the New York Times, have defined the administration’s intelligence revelation campaign as the most aggressive since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.⁴

From what has transpired so far, the United States and United Kingdom knew from the very beginning that Russia was about to invade Ukraine and that it was just a question of time before Russia would eventually do so. This knowledge can be said to have been gathered broadly from the “thousands” of satellite imageries made available by military and commercial satellites in space on the one hand and hosts of intelligence assets on ground both from within Russia and in many other parts of the world – the latter source we may never know their identities. United States and United Kingdom in particular became convinced that with the type and volume of military build-up and movement of Russian military along Ukrainian borders, war is imminent. What would have been surprising is for the Russian military to make a U-turn and go back home without entering Ukrainian territories. Tragically, this was not the case. Russia came to the Ukrainian borders for invasion. And that was what it eventually did on February 24.

Russia on the other hand also knew that the US and UK knew that it was going to invade Ukraine. So there was no hiding place for Russia anymore or the opportunity to deny what Russia knew what the US and UK already knows. There was no plausible deniability for Russia in this case. But several members of the Western Alliance/NATO chose to ignore the intel made available to them on this impending invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It is like playing ostrich burying its head in the sand amidst the overwhelming evidence that Russia was about to pierce through Ukraine in an invasion.

Notable among them were France and Germany. Therefore the invasion caught them by surprise. And that was not too good. This probably account for the shuttle diplomacy by France to Moscow (before the French presidential election) to see what can be done to avert the war. French shuttle diplomacy failed woefully to achieve any significant objective. It did not prevent Russia from invading Ukraine on the 24^th February.

Germany on the other hand can be said to be very reticent from the very beginning. It did not actually believe that Russia would start another war with Ukraine after 2014 over “flimsy” reasons given by Russia (demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine) with a “special military operations”.  The war equally caught Germany by surprise and it was only shortly later that Germany came to terms with the full implications of what Russia has embarked upon.

The general belief that Russia would not invade Ukraine was not limited to many European countries alone. It was widespread across the globe and it was like a cancer that numbs the brain preventing one from viewing reality objectively.

But for the United States and United Kingdom, they quickly set out to define what their position would likely be in the emerging conflict scenario in Ukraine. They did not hesitate to pitch their tent with Ukraine and daring Russia to cross the borders in an invasion. The first stage was the declassification of intelligence about the Russian plans for invasion of Ukraine – in the so-called “false flag” issues. The declassification and/or disclosure of some of the intel in this “false flag” context was a corpus of accusation that Russia could not discharge and the final invasion on the 24 February was a confirmation of those allegations.

However, even with the advance disclosure or declassification of intelligence about Russian intentions in Ukraine prior to the invasion, Ukraine was not also certain when the Russians would invade even though the Ukrainians were certain that invasion has become inevitable. Ukraine did not also prepare itself for the invasion. Ukraine was not also certain that Russia was going or about to invade at the time it did because Ukraine did not ostensibly have accurate intelligence to this effect. That was how it was possibly easy for Russia to barrel through the borders and move into the heartlands of Ukraine before Ukraine could gather itself for self-defense and counter-offensive.

The war was keenly being monitored from outer space with what both military and commercial satellites were able to gather and analyzed by the military experts. This was what gave the United States and United Kingdom an edge in the cloak-and-dagger war over Russia from the very beginning. The US and UK chose to share some of what they know from satellite imageries publicly to let the Russians know that they know. Of course, it is not everything that the United States and United Kingdom knew about the Russian intentions in Ukraine that were publicly disclosed via the declassification of sensitive intel.

It is a war being fought with probably all available means, no matter how dirty the means might be viewed. It is a multifaceted or multidimensional war. Yet the Western Alliance does not need to go into physical battle with Russia. The ongoing ferocious covert war against Russia is enough to degrade its ability to conduct a successful war in Ukraine. This is the effect we are most probably seeing in the battlefield which the Western strategists and policymakers are yet to acknowledge or admit. That is why Russia is finding it tough with Ukraine, encountering one obstacle or the other – apart from the now widely acknowledged ill or shoddy preparation. Russia is not only losing troops and generals; it is also losing heavy military equipment such as the Moskva warship in the Black Sea and T-90M advance battle tank near Izyum, etc. Russia has also being forced to revise its objectives and strategies several times because the war was becoming more and more unfavourable almost every day.

Raising of False Flag

One of the key aspects of the declassification of intel is the allegation against Russia that it is raising false flag(s) to invade Ukraine. In other words, Russia was being accused of manufacturing pretexts to invade Ukraine. Russia was said to be finding excuses on the part of Ukraine to invade i.e. to accuse Ukraine of being the first to provoke the physical war. Russia unfortunately could not discharge these false flag accusations even though many others chose to disbelieve the United States and United Kingdom. Neither could it find those pretexts or excuses on the part of Ukraine. Russia became the aggressor while Ukraine was the defender.

The United States said it has obtained intelligence indicating that Russia has formed a plan to stage a false attack, which would serve as justification for an invasion of Ukraine, according to the U.S. State Department and U.S. officials quoted in news reports on February 3. The officials said the plan was revealed in declassified intelligence shared with Ukrainian officials and European allies in recent days. The plan potentially included videos showing a staged attack depicting the graphic aftermath of an explosion, including equipment appearing to belong to Ukraine or allied nations, said an unidentified official. “This video, if released, could provide Putin the spark he needs to initiate and justify military operations against Ukraine,” the official said. This would include the possibility of having separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine invite a Russian intervention.⁵

The U.S. deputy national-security adviser, Jonathan Finer, said in an interview that the U.S. didn’t know for sure Russia would take such a route, “but we know that this is an option under consideration.” Finer told U.S. broadcaster MSNBC that it would involve actors playing mourners and corpses to represent bodies of people purportedly killed. State Department spokesman Ned Price confirmed that U.S. intelligence has gathered the information. He told reporters that the United States is publicizing it to lay bare the extent of Russia’s destabilizing actions toward Ukraine and to dissuade Russia from continuing what Price said was a dangerous campaign.⁶

Officials did not release any direct evidence of the plan or say how they learned of it because they did not want to risk compromising their sources and methods. It also was not clear that senior Russian officials had approved the operation. A British government official quoted by The New York Times said the United Kingdom had done its own analysis of the intelligence and had high confidence that Russia was planning to engineer a pretext to blame Ukraine for an attack. The details of the intelligence, the official said, are “credible and extremely concerning.” The allegation is the latest by the U.S. and Britain that Russia is plotting to use a false pretext to go to war against Ukraine after amassing more than 100,000 troops near its border with its neighbor. In December the White House accused Moscow of developing a “false-flag” operation to create pretext for an invasion, and Britain recently named Ukrainians it accused of having ties to Russian intelligence officers plotting to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.⁷

The above is without doubt a form of psychological war. But we may never know the impacts of this psychological warfare waged by the Western Alliance against Russia from the very beginning of the conflict and how it has gone to shape the Russian invasion plan.

In an analysis by Stephen Collinson of CNN, he was of the view that Western intelligence agencies are waging a psychological war over Ukraine directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an expert at the genre, who is now effectively taking a dose of his own medicine. The United States and its allies are painting a picture of a bogged down, demoralized and dysfunctional Russian military taking disastrous losses on the battlefield, and are simultaneously conjuring a vision of growing political tension inside the Kremlin. They claim the Russian leader is isolated, poorly advised and lacking real intelligence on just how badly the war is going. Western governments are preventing Putin from defining the narrative of the war — just as they did before it began, when their declassified intelligence correctly called an invasion many geopolitical experts thought was unlikely.⁸

It is a tough position for a Russian leader who has often deployed information warfare himself, notably while meddling in US and European elections. The remarkable detail of the declassified intelligence assessments must also be especially galling to Putin, a former KGB officer and intelligence chief. And they leave open the possibility that Western intelligence agencies have the capacity to see deep into the Kremlin’s war effort and internal politics, which is likely to infuriate the Russian leader and could open further cracks in his regime.⁹

The willingness of Western governments to be so open about what they are seeing inside Ukraine and Moscow has surprised even some veteran spies. “It makes intelligence professionals, even former ones like me, nervous, because, of course, it’s so ingrained in us to protect sources and methods,” Steve Hall, former chief of Russia operations for the CIA, told CNN’s Ana Cabrera.¹⁰

Part of the intrigue about the US showdown with Putin and the intelligence angle is being fed by the nature of the covert community itself. Outsiders have no way of independently assessing the full accuracy of the information being pushed into the public view by their leaders. So we don’t know where it’s all coming from or from whom. But of course, that’s the point, and it’s keeping the Russians guessing too.¹¹

The attempt to portray the war in Ukraine as a disaster for Russia is coming at a moment when Western officials are discounting Moscow’s claims that it is deescalating the conflict in Kyiv and elsewhere. Instead, they say, Putin’s forces are “repositioning — possibly for an intensified assault in eastern Ukrainian regions where Moscow has been pummeling civilians and razing cities. Such a tactic could be designed to unite Russian-held areas with Crimea, which Putin seized in 2014, and to give Moscow a direct corridor to the Black Sea through Ukraine.¹²

Western officials have sketched a remarkable portrait of the war.¹³ In Australia, one of Britain’s top spy chiefs, Jeremy Fleming, said that Putin had “massively misjudged” the war, the resistance of the Ukrainian people and his own military’s capacity, and had been poorly served by his subordinates. “We’ve seen Russian soldiers — short of weapons and morale — refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft,” said Fleming, who heads GCHQ, the UK’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Fleming’s frankness was extraordinary coming from a leading espionage agency chief. But it is being mirrored in the United States where there were new reports on Wednesday that opened a window into the war and Putin’s inner circle.¹⁴

An official told CNN’s Jeremy Diamond that Putin is being “misinformed” by advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield then said on camera that the Russian leader’s advisers were “too afraid to tell him the truth.” She said there was now a “persistent tension” between Putin and his military leadership.¹⁵

As with the pre-invasion messaging, it’s clear that the US does not want the Russians to be able to create a dominant narrative of their own about the war through disinformation. Creating a picture of a failing war also helps maintain support for the tough Western stand against Putin. It may also improve morale among Ukrainians who are resisting Russia’s onslaught. And it gives Western leaders a political opening to argue their policies are working as they manage public opinion on the war.¹⁶

By providing a look into the disarray among Russian troops, the allies may be able to build internal political pressure on the Kremlin. Given the Moscow government’s crushing of independent media, there will be few illusions that the Russian people will hear the US version of events, though tech-savvy younger Russians with VPN passwords allowing access to foreign internet services might.¹⁷ But a drumbeat of humiliation for Russia could further sow discord inside the military, political and intelligence elites. In recent days, it has almost seemed as though Western officials, by discussing the situation in the war so openly, have been trying to address Putin and his advisers directly.¹⁸

The raising of the false flags by the United States and United Kingdom put Russia at a great disadvantage in an unfolding covert and mainly psychological warfare. Russia has no known answer or rebuttal to this. With the false flag accusation, Russia could no longer hide its intention but can only confirm it. The only way Russia could have denied it was by not invading Ukraine at all. But that is impossible given the decision already made by the Kremlin to invade Ukraine because according to it, Russia is facing an existential threat with Ukraine’s declared intention to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and has to go into Ukraine to demilitarize and denazify it in a special military operation.

The false flag also remove the element of surprise from the final invasion of Ukraine. At least, the United States and United Kingdom were not taken by surprise because their intel has confirmed the Russian intention to invade. The only people taken by surprise were those that chose to disbelieve the false flag accusations by the US and UK. But the false flag accusations were the beginning of intelligence travail for Russia during the war. Other bodily blows were to follow the first round of Russian defeat in psychological warfare waged by the US and UK against it: economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, military and humanitarian aids to Ukraine with Finland and Sweden readiness to join NATO.

Ebb and Flow of the Tide

But everything was literally in state of flux as both sides are battling for supremacy and survival. Both are still counting their woes as damages continue to be inflicted by both sides.

However and this is very important for the necessary understanding of subsequent events as they unfold, according to Frank Figliuzzi, an MSNBC Opinion Columnist and head of counterintelligence at the FBI, [i]t would be understandable, but a mistake, to think American support is limited to what we can see. Ukraine playing the role of David against Russia’s Goliath is impressive optics, but it’s not happening in a vacuum.¹⁹

First, here at home, we’ve learned that 12 officials assigned to the Russian mission to the United Nations were expelled from the U.S. for conduct outside the scope of their diplomatic duties, which means they were likely intelligence officers previously identified by the FBI as spying for Russian President Vladimir Putin. What we don’t know is the story behind the decision to expel them, or, more interestingly, to not expel the multiple Russian intelligence officers working here under both diplomatic and nonofficial cover positions.²⁰ Domestically, we know that the FBI’s counterintelligence agents diligently work to identify and counter foreign spies, including Russian intelligence officers. Undoubtedly, there is an all-out effort by U.S. operatives here and throughout the world to recruit Russian officials who can provide timely intelligence on Putin’s plans against Ukraine. Of course, what we don’t know, and may never know, is how many Russian officials are agreeing to play for Team America.²¹

Second, the U.S. appears to be attempting to compromise Putin’s strategy and tactics, including accurately predicting his intentions and timing. While intelligence officials may debate the pros and cons of Biden publicly releasing so much otherwise normally classified intelligence, they should concede that Biden’s certainty and confidence in his available intelligence likely means the U.S. has multiple human and technical sources that have penetrated the Russian government.²²

Third, we know from history that the U.S. intelligence community is quite capable of supporting a protracted insurgency abroad. Ironically, a recent example of such capability is America’s clandestine efforts in support of Afghanistan’s fight against Russia’s military presence in that country. We also know that an American president has the authority to issue what’s called a “covert action order” that permits U.S. intelligence agencies — mostly the CIA — to engage in activities against an adversary and to do so in a manner that lets our government deny it happened. Such an order is believed to have been issued when the U.S. supported the Taliban against the Russians in Afghanistan.²³

A covert action finding by Biden in the Ukraine battle might allow the U.S. to keep Ukraine supplied with all manner of sensitive resources and supply chains. Still, we may never know whether such a finding exists or what it facilitated. Such is the world of clandestine operations.²⁴ But what we do know is there’s more to American support of Ukraine than crippling financial and oil sanctions. The U.S. government’s reticence to enforce a no-fly zone or its wariness at supplying Ukraine with Polish fighter jets doesn’t mean there isn’t significant and valuable assistance being provided. It just means we may never know the full extent of such support. And we should be OK with that.²⁵

It is not only the accusatory issues of false flags, declassification and disclosure of intel especially those of satellite pictures that showed Russian troop movements but also the intel that gave away the positions of Russian Generals on the battlefield that has given Russians goose pimples on the face. Russia was also denied its own intelligence assets with diplomatic cover within the United States with the expulsion of Russian diplomats whose activities were considered inconsistent with their status. This has become a contribution to the intelligence travail by Russia. The intel on the locations of the Russian Generals on the battlefield has enabled Ukrainian soldiers to target and eliminate them, a situation that has led to gnashing of teeth by Russian military and political leaderships About a dozen of Russian Generals have died so far on the battlefield including scores of Colonels.

[In what can now be seen to be weak rebuttals the] Kremlin said the intervention of Western nations will not have an effect on its war in Ukraine as the U.S. looks to target Russian generals through intelligence sharing. “Our military knows well that the United States, Britain and NATO permanently supply the Ukrainian army with intelligence data and other parameters. This is well-known,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “At the same time, [such actions] are unable to prevent the achievement of the special military operation’s goals.”²⁶

Peskov’s comments come one day after a report by The New York Times said U.S. intelligence was assisting Kyiv with tracking Russia’s top military leaders in Ukraine. Information provided by Western nations combined with Ukrainian intelligence has reportedly helped Ukrainian forces target Russian positions with artillery strikes and other types of attacks.²⁷

The Ukrainian government has claimed that a dozen Russian generals have been killed since the war began 70 days ago, but U.S. officials have not confirmed this figure. Peskov said Russia is doing “everything necessary” to counter intelligence sharing, Russian media said Thursday. Russia has accused the West of waging a proxy war against Moscow by supplying Ukraine with billions of dollars worth of defensive aid. The U.S., NATO and other allied nations have vowed to continue arming Ukraine as Russia doubles down in its deadly campaign in eastern and southern parts of the country.²⁸

U.S. lawmakers additionally took steps last week to revive a World War II-era policy that would ensure that not only would Ukraine gain faster access to U.S. arms, but also all nations in Eastern Europe affected by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war would. The policy, which helped to defeat Adolf Hitler, was agreed to just days after Russia suggested it would also set its sights on Moldova.²⁹

To Amy Zegart, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks like a horrific Cold War throwback. Once again, a strongman rules in Moscow, Russian tanks are rolling across borders, and a democratic nation is fighting for its survival, street by street, day by day, armed with little more than Molotov cocktails and a fierce belief in freedom. For all the talk of emerging technologies and new threats, the violence in Ukraine feels raw and low-tech, and the world suddenly looks old again.³⁰

And yet, amid all these echoes of the past, Russia’s invasion has ushered in one development that is altogether new and could dramatically change geopolitics in the future: the real-time public disclosure of highly classified intelligence.³¹ 

Never before has the United States government revealed so much, in such granular detail, so fast and so relentlessly about an adversary. Each day over the past several weeks seemed to bring new warnings. Not vague, “Russia may or may not be up to something” kind of warnings, but “here’s the satellite imagery showing up to 175,000 Russian troops in these specific locations near the border” kind of warnings. Even as Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that he had no plans to invade and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that the U.S. was hyping the threat and roiling his economy, the intelligence disclosures kept coming—detailing updated troop numbers and locations, invasion timetables, casualty estimates, and more. It felt like watching a hurricane barreling toward landfall.³²

The disclosed intelligence wasn’t just about military movements. It was about secret plans at the core of Russia’s intelligence operations. American and British intelligence agencies sounded the alarm about plots to stage a coup in Kyiv, install a puppet regime, and conduct “false-flag operations” designed to generate phony pretexts to justify a real invasion. According to U.S. officials, one Russian scheme involved sending saboteurs to Eastern Ukraine to attack Russian separatists there, making it look like Ukraine was the aggressor and Putin’s troops were coming to the rescue. Another involved making a phony video depicting Ukrainian atrocities, complete with actors and corpses.³³

It is hard to overstate how much of a shift this represents. Intelligence is a closely guarded world, one where officials are loath to publicly air what they know, or how they know it, for fear of putting sources at risk or revealing to their rivals just how much information they have. In the past, the U.S. has openly shared intelligence only with the closest of allies, and restricted its use. Why has the White House been so open this time? So far, the Biden administration isn’t saying much about the aims of its radical-candor intelligence strategy. But three explanations seem likely.³⁴

The first has to do with inoculating the world against information warfare by getting the truth out before the lie. The essence of U.S. and allied intelligence disclosures has been “Don’t believe a word the Kremlin is going to tell you. It’s all a con.” The Russians are deception pros, and in previous episodes—as recently as the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2016 U.S. election—they’ve had the upper hand. Putin’s strategy has been to flood the zone with falsehoods, spreading disinformation early and often. Psychology research suggests why this is so effective: Once lies are believed, they are hard to shake, even in the face of overwhelming facts. The first-mover advantage in information warfare is huge. Getting the truth out before the con helps rally allies and shore up support in the U.S. and abroad.³⁵

Revealing intelligence also generates friction for Putin, knocking him off-balance. Instead of calling the shots and managing the Ukraine crisis on his schedule, Putin has to react to Washington. And instead of acting with impunity, he has to spend his most precious asset—time—worrying about his own intelligence weaknesses. How do the U.S. and its allies know what they know? What will they do with this advance knowledge? What Russian-intelligence vulnerabilities must be fixed? The more Putin stews about his own intelligence lapses, the less attention he can devote to hurting others. U.S. Cyber Command adopted a similar approach in 2018 called persistent engagement. The idea is simple but powerful: Weaken an adversary’s offense by making it work much harder at defense. Putin is an ideal target for this kind of strategy. He’s a former Russian-intelligence operative with a paranoid streak who obsesses about domestic enemies, not just foreign ones. You can take the man out of the KGB but not the KGB out of the man.³⁶

Finally, proactively disclosing intelligence makes it much harder for other countries to sit out the conflict or provide quiet support to Putin by hiding behind his fig-leaf narratives. Think of it as covert action in reverse—a forced outing of what’s really going on so that everyone has to take a side.³⁷

But the situation has gone beyond declassification and public disclosure of intelligence. The West is now waging a multifaceted cloak-and-dagger war against Russia. A kind of ring is being run around Russia from which it would be a miracle to escape from. Russia is manacled hand and foot by its own basic intelligence failure.

Launching an Invasion on the Piggyback of Weak Intelligence

Russia invaded Ukraine not knowing exactly what it is going to encounter on the battlefield. It did not know exactly the kind of resistance it is going to meet from the Ukrainians, a key issue that could have determined the type of habiliments of war to bring to the warfront. Nobody, of course, knew exactly the nature of intelligence available to Russia when it launched the invasion on the 24^th February. But as events unfold at the battlefield it became obvious that Russia launched the invasion on the horseback of weak intelligence which lend credence to the Western estimate about the Russian military and its firepower: its structural flaws and weak intelligence.

When the Russian attack began early in the morning on February 24, according to Ofek Riemer, the Western media was quick to declare a tremendous intelligence success. However, aside from the prediction that was realized, what was the role of intelligence in the crisis, and what was the actual contribution of the public use of information? This perhaps might never be known, but there are several insights that can be noted in these contexts.³⁸

On the political level, the constant intelligence assessments helped form a coherent narrative that painted Putin as an aggressor. The information showed a clear picture of a leader determined to take over Ukraine by force, while all the diplomatic, media, and military actions that originated in the Kremlin aimed to cloud the picture in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of the Ukrainians. The narrative drew a clear line between good and bad and between right and wrong, and thus enabled the West to form a broad and uniform front quickly against Russia. This translated into strengthening the European security community, with an emphasis on the NATO alliance, and imposing painful sanctions on Russia, which in tandem demanded difficult concessions from the Western economy. This seems to be one of the biggest achievements of the West in the current crisis – one that to a large extent surprised the international community and first and foremost the Russians themselves.³⁹

On the strategic level, publicly disclosing the intelligence on Russia’s intentions and plans failed to create deterrence and prevent the invasion. However, this was apparently not the West’s aim. On the contrary, the public use of intelligence is a default that indicates the West’s unwillingness to commit to deterring Russia, which would include a willingness to use military force and incur a risk of war. Indeed, if the West were determined to defend Ukraine with military force, it would have acted more cautiously with regard to the intelligence and refrained from risking essential sources in order to maintain superiority in the case that it would have been necessary to use this force against Russia.⁴⁰

Furthermore, some have claimed that the public discussion of Putin’s intentions pushed him into a corner and didn’t leave him a choice but to carry out the offensive intentions attributed to him. This claim is problematic. On the one hand, if we assume that Putin used coercive diplomacy, meaning he sought to create a credible military threat in order to extract political and military achievements, then the publicized intelligence assessments, which attributed great credibility to the threat, granted the global reverberation that Putin could have leveraged had he evinced willingness for compromise and de-escalation. On the other hand, if from the outset Putin was determined to invade Ukraine, as the Western intelligence claimed, then concern for international image and legitimacy or tactical military considerations was not his top priority, and therefore the revelation alone could not have stopped him, although in this case it may have accelerated the launching of the campaign.⁴¹

On the tactical level, intelligence disclosure helped undermine Russian confidence and disrupt Russia’s military and information operations, and at the same time bought time for Ukraine. Knowing that the government and military leadership have been infiltrated is unsettling, all the more so right before launching a military operation. The public disclosures presumably led to directing attention toward investigating and closing the intelligence breaches, and created cracks of distrust in the Russian leadership, which perhaps harmed and continues to harm the communication between echelons and bodies in Russia and erodes its operational effectiveness in the war. The reports on the arrest of senior Russian intelligence officials could be an indication of this. Concretely, revealing the secret operations to create a pretext for launching the war and replacing the government in Kiev seems to have pulled the rug out from under them and caused their cancellation, or at least changes. In addition, from the moment Putin made his decision to invade Ukraine, his main effort in the information arena was to “put the Ukrainians to sleep” with ruse and deception in order to mitigate the military resistance. The Western revelations made this much more difficult.⁴²

Joining this is the daily publication of assessments and information during the war from the intelligence communities of the United States and the UK. These reports address the need to cope with misinformation and disinformation, intentional and unintentional, on the part of both Russia and Ukraine, and reflect a balanced picture of the state of the fighting and its consequences in a way that enables level-headed and calculated decision making. For example, when Ukrainian sources reported Russian actions that threaten nuclear facilities at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia, Western and international bodies were quick to correct the reports in a way that so far has moderated the initial impression. However, beyond presenting an objective picture of the fighting, these reports also involve identification with the Ukrainian side and have an interest in harming the image of Russian strength and the army’s morale. Thus, the picture that arises from the reports, which in the eyes of many Western observers does not flatter the superior Russian army, could actually negatively affect the chances of stopping the campaign. This is because it would take a clear military achievement – besieging and conquering Kiev or cutting Ukraine off from access to the sea – to ensure that Russia’s powerful image and deterrent capability are not damaged.⁴³

Riemer, however, concludes that [a]t the same time, public disclosure of intelligence involves significant risk to sources and methods. Sometimes the sources are based on technology, and publishing the information attained through them could lead to their discovery and removal, and later also to closure of the technological gap between the discloser and the disclosed. Sometimes they are human sources with access to limited decision making circles, so that exposing pieces of information based on their reports could easily lead to their discovery, and of course harm to their personal security. A reputation of revealing information and endangering sources can even lead to difficulty recruiting human sources in the future.⁴⁴

[But] From the time the Kremlin claimed the troop buildup on its neighbor’s border was simply a training exercise, the U.S. has been able to turn one of its powerful assets — classified intelligence — into an effective tool by making it public, undercutting Russian forces before they could carry out their next moves.⁴⁵

CIA Director Bill Burns explained the administration’s approach in a speech at Georgia Tech, saying that at President Joe Biden’s direction, the U.S. government had taken “unprecedented steps to declassify intelligence and use it publicly to preempt the false narratives” spun by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, making it harder to “obscure the truth of his unprovoked and vicious aggression.” “Those decisions can never be taken lightly given the importance of protecting sources and methods,” he said. “But in this case, they have made a crucial contribution to a successful whole of government strategy.”⁴⁶ While these disclosures have so far proven effective in uniting the West and indeed, much of the world, against Russia, whether the U.S. can maintain the upper hand in a realm traditionally dominated by Russia is still an open question.⁴⁷

Since Russia invaded its neighbor in late February, intelligence agencies in the US and Britain have been remarkably willing to go public with their secret intelligence assessments of what is happening on the battlefield — and inside the Kremlin.⁴⁸

The US declassified intelligence findings claiming [that] Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed about his military’s poor performance in Ukraine by advisers scared to tell him the truth. On Thursday a British spy chief said demoralized Russian troops were refusing to carry out orders and sabotaging their own equipment. Jeremy Fleming, who heads Britain’s electronic intelligence agency GCHQ, made the comments in a public speech where he said the “pace and scale” at which secret intelligence is being released “really is unprecedented.”⁴⁹

Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at University College London, agreed that the very public intelligence campaign “reflects the fact that we now live in a different age, politically and internationally. And this is a different kind of war.” Officials say the stream of declassified intelligence — which includes regular briefings to journalists in Washington and London and daily Twitter updates from Britain’s defense ministry — has several aims. Partly it’s to let Putin know he is being watched, and to make him question what he’s being told. It’s also designed to embolden the Russian military to tell Putin the truth, and to convey to the Russian public that they have been lied to about the war.⁵⁰

The US and Britain also have released intelligence assessments in a bid to deter Russian actions. That was the case with recent warnings Russia might be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine. It’s all part of a closely coordinated trans-Atlantic strategy that has been in the works for months.⁵¹ 

Biden administration officials say they decided to aggressively share intelligence and coordinate messaging with key allies, including Britain, as US concerns about Russian troop movements in autumn 2021 put the intelligence community on high alert.⁵² In early November, US President Joe Biden dispatched CIA director William Burns to Moscow to warn that the US was fully aware of Russian troop movements. The White House has typically been tight-lipped about the director’s travels, but the Biden administration calculated that in this situation they needed to advertise the visit far and wide. The US Embassy in Moscow announced that Burns had met with top Kremlin officials shortly after his trip was over. Soon after Burns’ Moscow mission, US officials decided they needed to accelerate intelligence sharing.⁵³

Officials shared sensitive intelligence with other members of the Five Eyes alliance — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — and also with Ukraine. Director of national intelligence Avril Haines was dispatched to Brussels to brief NATO members on intelligence underlying growing American concerns that Russia seemed intent on invasion, according to a US official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.⁵⁴

Late last year, France and Germany led a group of European countries that appeared to be seeing similar military intelligence as the US and Britain, but were less convinced that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent. At NATO, Germany initially blocked the use of a system for helping Ukraine to acquire certain military equipment. France and Germany also blocked NATO from launching an early crisis planning system in response to the buildup, before relenting in December.⁵⁵

French media reported that the head of France’s military intelligence agency, which failed to anticipate the Russian invasion, has been removed from his post. Eric Vidaud’s departure comes amid soul-searching among France’s leadership about why it was taken by surprise by the war — which was particularly embarrassing for President Emmanuel Macron, who speaks regularly with Putin. Some see Vidaud as a scapegoat, and note that his removal comes just ahead of this month’s French presidential election.⁵⁶

In January, as Russia amassed troops near Ukraine’s border, Britain’s Foreign Office issued a statement alleging that Putin wanted to install a pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine. The UK said it was making the intelligence assessment public because of the “exceptional circumstances.”⁵⁷ Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 largely silenced the doubters, and drew a unified response from NATO. The release of US and British intelligence is partly designed to shore up that Western unity, officials and analysts say. Both Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson doubt Putin is serious about negotiating an end to the war and want to keep up the West’s military and moral support of Ukraine.⁵⁸

The impact inside Russia is hard to measure. The US official who spoke to the AP said the White House hopes divulging intelligence that Putin is misinformed could help prod the Russian leader to reconsider his options in Ukraine. But the publicity could also risk further isolating Putin or make him double down on his aim of restoring Russian prestige lost since the fall of the Soviet Union.⁵⁹

The official said Biden is in part shaped by a belief that “Putin is going to do what Putin is going to do,” regardless of international efforts to deter him. Galeotti said Western intelligence agencies likely don’t know how much impact their efforts will have on Putin. “But there’s no harm in giving it a try,” he said. “Because when it comes down to it, in this kind of intensely personalistic system (of government), if one line, or one particular notion, happens to get through and lodge itself in Putin’s brain, then that’s a really powerful result.”⁶⁰

Brett Holmgren, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (INR) at the U.S. Department of State, was of the view that “the ability to downgrade to a secret/red level or in some cases at the unclassified level was incredibly powerful, especially in the run-up to the invasion, to engage with countries, especially in Europe, that may have been on the fence at the time or skeptical of the intelligence reporting. The ability to share that information — in some cases in near-real time — really provided a common situational awareness across the coalition that we’re trying to mobilize to push back against Russian aggression.”⁶¹

Holmgren noted that Putin’s strategic errors “has achieved exactly the opposite of what he set out to do, which is to further divide NATO and the West, has had the opposite effect. It has unified the alliance. And it’s one of the big misjudgments that Putin made heading into this conflict. He overestimated the strength of his military. He underestimated the willpower of the Ukrainian people. And he underestimated the resolve and the unity of the West in the wake of this invasion.”⁶²

What the above picture conveys is that the war in Ukraine started with psychological warfare between Anglo-American allies and the Russians. And one can say without fear of contradiction that the Anglo-American allies won the psychological war and this is a significant factor why Russia has not been able to secure victory in the war with Ukraine. Western Alliance has artfully and successfully applied the pressure of economic sanctions, psychological warfare, informational and unknown quantity of cyber attacks. Diplomatic hostilities have increased from countries hitherto friendly with Russia. Russia is diplomatically isolated than ever and nobody can tell for how long this isolation would last.

Failure of Strategic Intelligence

The critical question is: How did Russia lose the cloak-and-dagger war beginning with the front-loading or downloading of satellite images unto the public domain which show clearly the Russian movement of troops and military equipment towards Ukraine while trying to give a different narrative?

In the Russian vision of its invasion of Ukraine, it is evident that it lacks the elements of substantive certainty about what might be the reactions of the NATO countries (especially the United States and United Kingdom to a lesser extent) to the invasion of Ukraine. In other words, the substantive uncertainty surrounding the reactions and/or intentions of US-led NATO countries about the invasion of Ukraine is the source of the costly strategic error and/or miscalculation that has become the Russian burden in the battlefield in Ukraine. This strategic error/miscalculation cannot be redressed overnight because its rippling effects are far-flung beyond the imagination of the Russian political decision makers and military strategists.

Russia never seriously thought that NATO could come out so forcefully, though hesitant at the beginning, to bolster Ukraine with military and humanitarian assistance on a scale that is now seen to be tilting the balance of power against Russia, bogging it down in frustration, slowly bleeding Russia from various arteries or domains. 

Thus there is a clear case of failure of strategic intelligence on the part of Russia in the invasion of Ukraine. The failure consists mainly of underestimating the will of the Ukrainians to fight back despite the overwhelming nature of the Russian military firepower. The Ukrainians demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubts that their resilience of spirit is never proved until tested in the battlefield for survival as a people.

The Russian strategic intelligence assessment underlining and supporting the invasion of Ukraine is heavily flawed in underestimating the will and willingness of the Ukrainians to fight back despite all the odds stacked up against them, for instance, despite being outnumbered by the Russians.

The Russian strategic intelligence assessment failure also consist of underestimation of the Western Alliance (NATO in particular) to rise up to the defense of Ukraine militarily, politically and economically. Russian strategic intelligence assessment is probably based on the false assumption or premise that NATO will not support Ukraine to the extent it is assessed to have now done. Again, this erroneous assumption might not be unconnected with the fantasy that NATO is probably afraid of Russia and would do everything to avoid offending or provoking Russia especially with Western Europe’s hitherto heavy reliance on Russian energy supply (especially natural gas) and other forms of economic cooperation. Russia never thought deep enough that Western European countries including Eastern European countries could make pluck up courage and make a volte-face to restrict or even completely terminate economic cooperation with Russia through crippling sanctions to support Ukraine and to undercut Russian aggressive moves in Ukraine.

With Western Alliance unequivocal support for Ukraine coupled with the Ukrainian survival instincts and dexterity at the battlefield, Russian military can now be seen running from pillar to pole, unable to conquer and hold any territory within Ukraine except heavy bombardment and large-scale destruction of Ukrainian cities and infrastructures but without succeeding in breaking the will or morale of the Ukrainian military forces and resistance.

But it is amazing to reflect back on this type of ignoble failure. Russia had ample time to prepare for the invasion. Indeed, the invasion has been under preparation for more than six months before the actual invasion in late February 2022. Russia has been preparing for the invasion since the third-quarter of 2021 – an enough preparatory period to gather and assess strategic intelligence relating to the impending invasion and matching this against the military strength of both Russia and Ukraine. But as the battlefield experience in the last two months has now shown, the entire assessment regime: the information, deduction of facts, criteria for analytical judgment were a flop as they are deeply flawed.

The empirical encounter of the Russian military in the Ukrainian battlefield domain has shown clearly what could happen if the Russian military were to face and engage NATO forces in a battle. One can imagine what would have happened. The possibility exists that Russian military could be decimated within a very short period of time in a full spectrum of warfare including ground, air and naval battles. Russian actual military strength has most probably been overrated by the West. Russia is currently sweating in Ukraine with the latter’s light weaponry. Ukraine has been begging Western Alliance to supply it with heavier weapons so as to be able to hit Russia harder or even deal it devastating blows. So what happens when Russia meets NATO with the latter’s heavier and more sophisticated weaponry? Russia has lost over 20, 000 men within two months including eight generals and over thirty colonels (as at the time of writing this article). What happens in a broader European battlefield with NATO?

Indeed, one of the features of the war that has become glaring is that Ukraine lacks the requisite military strength or firepower to counter the Russian offensive. The Ukrainian military lacks the requisite medium or heavy weapons with which it can successfully counter the Russian bombardments that have led to large-scale destruction of its cities and infrastructures. Ukraine has therefore not only resorted to improvisation (and has proven its ingenuity in this domain) but has continue to beg for such heavy weapons from the West. The West was initially reluctant to provide such heavy weapons ostensibly because it does not want to provoke Russia’s fury of any sort and in any manner. What this situation partly demonstrates is that Ukrainian military firepower has not been sufficiently strengthened since 2014 when it encountered Russia in the first war, if not since the 90s when it gained independence from the former Soviet Union – to counter evident Russian massive military power.

Russia has tragically played into the hands of Western Alliance. The West is now waging a full-scale proxy war against Russia through Ukraine. Of course, Ukraine is the battering ram and suffering the collateral damages. But Russia has unwittingly played into the hands or net-trap of the West through its ill-advised invasion of Ukraine. Russia is now bleeding. The West is now conducting a full-scale indirect war against Russia from many domains: economic, political socio-informational, cyberspace, etc. Sanctions are being imposed from left, right and centre of which effects are now gathering momentum but have not reached the highest level of impacts where they will hurt Russia the most and make it cry. Military aids are being channeled to Ukraine to bolster its strength and help fight the Russians. The highest of this phalanx of sanctions and direct military aids to Ukraine was reached when President Joe Biden requested from the Congress a whooping sum of $33 billion (already approved) to be channeled to Ukraine for military and humanitarian aids. This amount was apart from the earlier $800 million already approved for disbursement to Ukraine.

Already approved is the legislation of a Second World War-era allowing the White House to lend weapons to Ukraine in an accelerated manner to help fight Russia.

Part of the request to the US Congress by President Biden was the plan by the US Government to increase its executive power to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs close to Putin and use the proceeds to help the Ukrainians. One can imagine the devastating psychological effect of such an action on the Russian leadership. If and when the Congress approves this plan and it is carried out, then one can imagine that the end of Putin’s reign is slowly drawing nearer. One after the other, the oligarchs could start withdrawing their political support from Putin and start to abandon him like rats deserting a sinking ship – a support that has hitherto served as a corner-piece of Putin’s political base and existence.

From the above, it is evident that the US is almost single-handedly closing in on Russia – short of formal declaration of war – and it is just a question of time before Russia will be completely “encircled” and choked up. Russia is still, of course, maneuvering and counter-maneuvering. But the room for maneuvering, especially in the diplomatic space, is fast getting constrained by the day essentially because of its intransigence and belief that it can still subdue or overpower Ukraine militarily, overthrow Zelensky-led government in Kyiv and install its puppet regime.

The war in Ukraine is slowly moving towards “no victor no vanquished” situation even with the large-scale destruction that Russia has inflicted upon Ukraine. Ukraine, on the other hand, may not be able to substantively or technically defeat Russia but can force it to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territories after inflicting high casualty rate on Russia. Russia will not be able to claim total victory but will be forced to the negotiating table for settlement with Ukraine with all hostile forces playing around it. This settlement will be highly circumscribed for Russia as it will be negotiating from the position of weakness after it has been battered by Ukraine.

According to Kimberly Kagan, President of the Institute for the Study of War: Our adversaries, and particularly Russia (and Iran), are now aggressively experimenting with new concepts and techniques in small wars, overseas engagement, and domestic crises. The Russians are conducting extensive lessons-learned activities based on their experiences fighting in Syria and Ukraine and are constantly updating their theory, doctrines, organization and practice based on those lessons. The Chinese are learning lessons from their historical and current pandemic and disaster relief operations, their special operations, wargaming and observing other actors such as Russia overseas.⁶³ 

In the current war with Ukraine, there is nothing to show that Russia is applying any lesson learnt from Syria or elsewhere. Neither were there evidences of application of new concepts and techniques in the current war with Ukraine. Russian engagement in Syria stands in stark contrasts with what it is now doing in Ukraine.

Where Did Russian Intelligence Go Wrong?

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is broadly comparable to agencies such as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, and France’s DGSE. Its Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is a military foreign intelligence service, again like so many NATO counterparts. The Federal Security Service (FSB) is a domestic security and counter-intelligence agency – while it is rather more carnivorous than the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Germany’s BfV or Italy’s AISI, at a pinch one might think the analogy holds.⁶⁴

But, if anything, a much better way of thinking of these agencies is to compare them to the British Special Operations Executive or US Office of Strategic Service of the Second World War. For they are engaged in far more than just collecting information to inform policy, and with a bias towards aggressive risk-taking that is actively encouraged by the Kremlin.⁶⁵

Russia’s security and intelligence services operate in a rather different political context that the West’s, and this gives them a radically different character. President Vladimir Putin – a former officer of the Soviet Union’s KGB and then director of the FSB – clearly regards the so-called Chekists (after the Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ first political police) as among his closest allies and most useful instruments. In 2015, on the Day of Security Service Personnel, he called them “strong and courageous people, true professionals who are reliably protecting Russia’s sovereignty and national integrity and the lives of our citizens.”⁶⁶

As a result, they are at once coddled, competitive and corrupt. They are coddled in that throughout the Putin years they have seen their budgets and powers steadily increase. Furthermore, their very status within the political process has increased. Since around 2014, if not before, the indications are that ambassadors and indeed the foreign minister have much less authority to block operations (or even be informed of them in advance) than before.⁶⁷

This comes at a price, though. Their perks are contingent on their ultimate master and patron, Putin, regarding them as being useful. The GRU, for example, spent years in disfavour because of their perceived failings during the 2008 Georgian War. The agencies have overlapping responsibilities (even the FSB is increasingly involved in foreign operations) and compete fiercely and ruthlessly to outshine the others. This is a carnivorous, cannibalistic system – as the former electronic intelligence service FAPSI discovered when it was devoured, largely by the GRU and FSB.⁶⁸

As a result, they rarely cooperate well but, on the other hand, will take chances and demonstrate aggression and imagination. They also, as will be discussed below, compete to tell the Kremlin what it wants to hear, which is perhaps the most dangerous outcome of all.⁶⁹

At the same time, the relative impunity of the security services, as well as their broad powers, has contributed to an endemic problem of corruption. This even extends to operational affairs, from skimming funds intended for Donbass warlords to using eavesdropping capacities to help a ‘friendly’ company win a contract.⁷⁰

Stephen Hall, Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations, University of Bath, outlined some of the problems that have come to confront Russia as regard the war with Ukraine, in particular with President Vladimir Putin. Hall was of the view that Putin has been living in an illusory world created by himself where he is a prisoner and lives on the daily diet of false information served to him as his daily meals by security bureaucratic apparachikis that are in turn lives on fear of what Putin can do to them unexpectedly. 

Putin has been living in a virtual bunker. The presidential administration, his primary information source, is a secretive organisation and has been feeding Putin a controlled information flow for over a decade. The institution acts as a gatekeeper to Putin and blocks non-positive intelligence from reaching him.⁷¹ This twisting of facts to fit a particular worldview is only part of the problem. Another factor is that the different security services compete and undertake their own projects in the hope that this pleases Putin.⁷²

The Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB) or Federal Security Service, is one of many agencies. While the FSB is commonly thought of as a domestic intelligence agency, it also operates in other post-Soviet countries, except the Baltic states. Meanwhile the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedkiis (SVR), or Foreign Intelligence Service is involved in foreign intelligence gathering outside the post-Soviet space. The Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany (FSO), or Federal Protective Service, protects high-ranking officials. The Glavnoye upravleniye (GU), or Main Directorate – previously the GRU – is military intelligence.⁷³

The Rosgvardiya, or National Guard, which was created in 2016, is not strictly an intelligence agency but is effectively Putin’s Praetorian Guard. It is increasingly involved in external operations and has a direct line to Putin through its chief, Viktor Zolotov. He was Putin’s personal bodyguard from 2000 to 2013 before becoming minister of internal affairs and head of the internal troops from 2014 to 2016.⁷⁴

As a result of the unsavoury inter-agency rivalry among the intelligence agencies, Russian intelligence chief Sergey Beseda and his deputy, Anatoly Bolyukh, were placed under house arrest on March 9. Beseda and Bolyukh oversaw the foreign intelligence branch of the FSB, which is the Russian security service. They were allegedly the main proponents of the assumption that Ukraine would swiftly collapse, which has proved deeply flawed.⁷⁵

Even though the intelligence agencies are over-pampered by Putin by spending much on them, this has not guarantee good service delivery from them. For instance, [i]n 2020 Russia spent 5.5 trillion roubles (US$69 billion) on the security services. This amounts to 28% of the annual budget or 3.5 times the amount spent on health and education combined.⁷⁶

This comes at a price, though, with Putin demanding results. Each service is aware that they need to come up with the scariest crisis – or intelligence that fits Putin’s worldview – to increase their budget and influence. One example of this scare tactic was FSB chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov, claiming that the 2012 Siberian forest fires were the work of al-Qaeda. Scare tactics and only providing positive information to Putin results in a lack of coherence.⁷⁷

So there is high possibility that the intelligence briefings given to Putin upon which he based his decisions to invade Ukraine might have been exaggerated in content in terms of danger represented by Ukraine’s wish to join NATO which forms the fulcrum of the issues for which Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Olga Chyzh provided another alternative scenario: The Kremlin is suffering major setbacks, but will not alter its negotiating strategy. This isn’t mere bravado. Research on authoritarian regimes has shown that in many cases, the direction wars take is not solely determined by battlefield success or failure. Rather, major decisions – especially about when to end the war – are often dictated by the interests of the key political players within the country. Understanding the Kremlin’s decision-making, therefore, requires zeroing in on the key power dynamics within the regime.⁷⁸

Putin’s domestic political base consists of two rival power blocs: the intelligence apparatus and the military. Both have suffered major blows to their credibility during the war. However, as they continue to jockey for Putin’s favour, both also have a vested interest in prolonging the conflict in some form.⁷⁹

The intelligence bloc includes the current and former leadership of the FSB (the Russian successor of the Soviet KGB) and other intelligence agencies. Having started his career as a KGB operative, Putin has maintained a symbiotic relationship with the agency throughout his tenure. Several FSB leaders are long-time members of Putin’s inner circle and his confidants.⁸⁰

The other power bloc consists of the heads of the military and defence structures, such as the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, the chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, and the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. These individuals have earned the trust of the Russian leader as a result of decades of service and unwavering loyalty.⁸¹

Despite notable similarities – conservative, anti-democratic and anti-west – the interests of the two blocs are not perfectly aligned. The intelligence community’s focus is domestic, broadly defined to include the former Soviet space. Its specialties are controlling dissent, staging covert operations, and political sabotage. The military community, as its name implies, is the party of war. It derives its influence from foreign policy adventurism. The intelligence agencies reign during peaceful times, the military rules during war.⁸²

The unforeseen setbacks experienced in the course of the invasion have thrown a wrench into the usual power dynamics between the two blocs and the Russian leader. For Putin, the war has revealed the true state of affairs within both the military and intelligence apparatus.⁸³

Intelligence took the first blow. Moscow’s original plan was to take Kyiv in two days. Russian troops brought parade uniforms, expecting to march down Khreshchatyk in a victory celebration. The ambitious plan was based on intelligence reports that Ukrainians would greet Russian soldiers as liberators – false information that led to massive strategic miscalculations and losses during the war’s first stage.⁸⁴

The military has also come under scrutiny. The war has shown the world the pathetic state of the Russian army, a consequence of decades of deferred maintenance and blatant corruption. Low morale, lack of training, and equipment failures have shown an unflattering light on what is apparently the world’s second strongest army.⁸⁵

As a result of these failures, Putin has learned that some of his closest friends and allies have lied, misappropriated funds and forged reports for a significant part of his rule. His inner circle may not be as trustworthy as he thought.⁸⁶

There is some evidence that Putin may not have access to all of this information – the dispatches he receives may downplay Russia’s setbacks. Even so, unconfirmed reports of the arrests of top intelligence officials responsible for the situation in Ukraine indicate that the Russian leader is aware of, and has reacted to, some of the intelligence failures. And speculation has also surrounded the recent decrease in public appearances by Shoigu and Gerasimov.⁸⁷

Elena Grossfeld is a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London (KCL), and a member of King’s Intelligence and Security Group (KISG).

She was of the view that “perhaps what we are seeing is not intelligence, but rather a policymaker failure. In the case of Russia, the decision-making process and its participants are particularly opaque. Personal relations between Russian intelligence agencies heads and President Putin appear to affect the intelligence delivery, as Russia lacks a single, unifying, coordinating intelligence authority. Coupled with an ongoing rivalry among Russian intelligence organisations a lack of a single authority precludes the delivery of an unbiased intelligence assessment.”⁸⁸ 

In the absence of verified information, it is unclear whether the reported issues arose from intelligence failures, policymakers’ decisions, or yet another, thus far unknown, cause. If indeed caused by failures in the collection, analysis, delivery, or a lack of access to the small and opaque circle of decision-makers, the importance of credible, high-quality intelligence during global crises is demonstrated again by the increased danger to Ukraine, Russia, and the world. Until reliable sources become available, all that remains is to speculate and expect the intelligence scholars, in a repeat of post 9/11, to spend the next decade attempting to unravel the mysteries of this war.⁸⁹

Putin’s war effort also does not seem to be going according to plan. We have now seen both tactical and strategic failures on the ground. Twenty seven days into the invasion, the Ukrainian air force remains operational and retains a significant part of its airplanes, drones, and air defense assets. Ukrainian air space continues to be contested. Initial attempts to capture Ukrainian airfields failed. Misdirected Russian bombing of inoperational aircraft and facilities, numerous unsuccessful attempts to capture and encircle Ukrainian cities and towns, and multiple Russian casualties and POWs suggest a lack of awareness of Ukrainian troops and military assets’ locations.⁹⁰

It appears that Russia underestimated the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ preparedness, autonomy, and the will to fight, as well as and the support of ordinary citizens’ for Ukraine’s independence and readiness to take up arms. Russian military logistics was caught unprepared for the resistance, leading to equipment breakdowns, lack of fuel, and massive abandonment of costly missile systems, artillery, and tanks. Failure to suppress drone operations allows Ukrainian defenders to continue their attacks, exacerbating Russian logistical woes and leading to further casualties. Whether due to Ukrainian tight operational security, or other reasons, we have yet to see reports of famed Russian electronic warfare used; instead, its troops resort to open communications available for all to hear – and to jam.⁹¹

Embarrassing and lengthy outages of the official websites of, among others, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Russian government demonstrated a lack of adequate cyber defenses and under-appreciation of Ukrainian cyber forces and the global support they managed to rally.⁹²

Finally, the Kremlin also seems to have misjudged the US and NATO’s resolve to aid Ukraine and the worldwide support to the plight of Ukraine and its citizens. Despite some preparations, Russia was surprised by the severity of economic, financial, transport, and trade isolation that Russian citizens and businesses find themselves in.⁹³

Conceivably, those could be the result of intelligence or policymakers’ failures. If indeed a failure of intelligence, it could potentially be a failure of collection, analysis, or delivery.⁹⁴

Unverified reports by Ukrainian security services allege that President Putin ordered an investigation of potential embezzlement of the five billion dollars allocated for Russian subversive activities and human intelligence (HUMINT) in Ukraine since 2014.⁹⁵

Another possible cause for collection failures could be Russian Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) capabilities – Russia is trailing the US in its Earth-observation capacity while battling the poor lifespan of its existing satellites and lacking the commercial satellites available in the West. In a repeat from its war with Georgia in 2008, reported failure of communication equipment hinders the work of Russian intelligence, leading to operational security failures.⁹⁶

Ostensibly those issues could also result from a failure in intelligence analysis. Historically, Soviet intelligence lacked dedicated analytical staff until mid 1980s. Several Soviet leaders, among them Stalin, expressly forbade delivery of analytical materials, demanding raw intelligence only. Russian intelligence has been known to tailor its assessments to match its superiors’ preferences, with multiple examples documented in the history of the KGB.⁹⁷

While unconfirmed, a recently-leaked letter attributed to a serving FSB analyst suggests contemporary Russian analysis echoes this lack of rigor and lack of ability to speak truth to power. This, coupled with the widely-televised humiliation of the head of the SVR, Sergey Naryshkin at the prewar meeting of the Security Council, perhaps only underlines the alleged long-term discord between Putin and his security and intelligence community.⁹⁸

This writer has repeatedly said Russian military strength is overrated and overhyped. Its military strength has now been demystified for all to see. One can speculate with confidence that if Ukraine get sufficient supply of heavy weaponry from the Western countries, Ukraine will not only chase Russia out of its territory but may even pursue it across the borders, deal it more deadly blows including lobbing some punches at Belarus. Russian nose will be broken.

According to US Congressional Report Service, the initial military performance by Ukraine came as a pleasant surprise.

Many observers and analysts have been surprised and impressed by Ukraine’s military resistance. Despite having a smaller military than Russia, and a quantitative and qualitative disadvantage in equipment and resources, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) have proven resilient and adaptive. Analysts note the UAF has demonstrated greater flexibility than the Russian military and a willingness to adapt to changing conditions to exploit Russian missteps and weaknesses. The UAF also has been benefiting from high levels of motivation and recruitment.⁹⁹ 

Initially, the UAF traded space to draw Russian forces in, as Russian units advanced without sufficient convoy protection and logistical support. As Russian units advanced, Ukraine emphasized guerrilla strategies, such as hit and run or ambushes, to attack supply lines. Ukraine also isolated Russian units in an effort to tire and deplete Russian forces. Ukraine leveraged key capabilities (such as the TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle for direct attack and targeting for artillery strikes), security assistance, and knowledge to stymie Russian advances and undermine Russian advantages, such as airpower. Easily deployable weapons systems (including foreign and domestic anti-tank and anti-air systems) have been effective at stopping Russian forces and imposing losses in Russian personnel and equipment. The UAF also appears to have adopted a diffuse command structure, allowing each operational command to coordinate and initiate operations according to local conditions.¹⁰⁰

Observers have been less clear on the state of Ukrainian losses, although most agree Ukraine has suffered significant personnel and equipment losses. Ukraine has operated air defenses that play a crucial role in the conflict, especially around Kyiv, but documented losses of strategic air defense systems have occurred. Other losses include tank, artillery, and rocket artillery systems. Although Ukraine has effectively exploited person-operated weaponry and guerrilla tactics against Russia, Ukrainian officials have pressed other countries to supply needed armor, artillery, and rocket artillery systems to enable Ukraine to conduct larger-scale counteroffensives against the Russian military. In addition, Ukraine will likely need logistics and supplies not only to replace losses but also to sustain continued combat operations.¹⁰¹

Analysts continue to debate whether Russia has enough combat capable forces to conduct a full encirclement and how available forces will dictate the extent of Russian offensives. Additionally, analysts note that Russian units have been reorganizing and attempting to improve persistent weaknesses demonstrated during the conflict, but the extent or ability of Russian forces to remedy these failures after significant losses is unclear. Russian units continue to suffer from logistics issues, complicated by persistent Ukrainian counterattacks outside of Kharkiv targeting Russian supply lines.¹⁰² 

Ukraine has reinforced units in the Donbas and southwest in Mykolaiv, including fresh units from Odessa that were kept in reserve against a potential amphibious landing. Benefiting from shorter internal supply lines, the UAF has conducted counterattacks outside Kharkiv and the southwest toward Kherson. In Kherson and west of the Dnipro River, Russian units are exposed and reportedly have suffered significant casualties. As Russia shifts forces and focus to the Donbas, Russian units in the southwest may be exposed and vulnerable to UAF counterattacks.¹⁰³

Perhaps most significant of all is the ring or web of intelligence and counterintelligence mounted by the West, notably the US and Britain against Russia in the war, starting with declassification of intelligence about the Russian troop movements in Ukraine, sharing such intelligence with Ukrainian leadership especially its intelligence agencies, even trying to get into Putin’s head (firing “neuro-weapons” at his brain) in order to determine how he may react under certain circumstances.  The West has contributed in no small measure to the travails being currently encountered by Russia.

What Gordon Corera of BBC wrote was quite revealing for the light he shed on the state of mind of Putin as the Russian leader ultimately responsible for the fate of Russia in its war with Ukraine which cannot be taken out of equation for analytical insights into the performance of the military in the battlefield in Ukraine.

For years they have sought to get inside Mr. Putin’s mind, to better understand his intentions. With Russian troops seemingly bogged down in Ukraine, the need to do so has become all the more necessary as they try to work out how he will react under pressure. Understanding his state of mind will be vital to avoid escalating the crisis into even more dangerous territory.¹⁰⁴

There has been speculation that Russia’s leader was ill, but many analysts believe he has actually become isolated and closed off to any alternative views. His isolation has been evident in pictures of his meetings, such as when he met President Emmanuel Macron, the pair at far ends of a long table. It was also evident in Mr. Putin’s meeting with his own national security team on the eve of war. Mr. Putin’s initial military plan looked like something devised by a KGB officer, one Western intelligence official explains. It had been created, they say, by a tight “conspiratorial cabal” with an emphasis on secrecy. But the result was chaos. Russian military commanders were not ready and some soldiers went over the border without knowing what they were doing.¹⁰⁵

Western spies, through sources they will not discuss, knew more about those plans than many inside Russia’s leadership. But now they face a new challenge – understanding what Russia’s leader will do next. And that is not easy. “The challenge of understanding the Kremlin’s moves is that Putin is the single decision-maker in Moscow,” explains John Sipher, who formerly ran the CIA’s Russia operations. And even though his views are often made clear through public statements, knowing how he will act on them is difficult intelligence challenge. “It is extremely hard in a system as well protected as Russia to have good intelligence on what’s happening inside the head of the leader especially when so many of his own people do not know what is going on,” Sir John Sawers, a former head of Britain’s MI6, told the BBC.¹⁰⁶

Mr. Putin, intelligence officials say, is isolated in a bubble of his own making, which very little outside information penetrates, particularly any which might challenge what he thinks. “He is a victim of his own propaganda in the sense that he only listens to a certain number of people and blocks out everything else. This gives him a strange view of the world,” says Adrian Furnham, a professor of psychology and co-author of a forthcoming book The Psychology of Spies and Spying. The risk is what is called “group think” in which everyone reinforces his view. “If he’s a victim of group think we need to know who the group is,” says Prof Furnham.¹⁰⁷

The circle of those Mr. Putin talks to has never been large but when it came to the decision to invade Ukraine, it had narrowed to just a handful of people, Western intelligence officials believe, all of those “true believers” who share Mr. Putin’s mindset and obsessions. Who are the advisors in Vladimir Putin’s tight inner circle?¹⁰⁸

The sense of how small his inner circle has become was emphasised when he publicly dressed down the head of his own Foreign Intelligence Service at the national security meeting just before the invasion – a move which seemed to humiliate the official. His speech hours later also revealed a man angry and obsessed with Ukraine and the West. Those who have observed him say the Russian leader is driven by a desire to overcome the perceived humiliation of Russia in the 1990s along with a conviction that the West is determined to keep Russia down and drive him from power. One person who met Mr. Putin remembers his obsession with watching videos of Libya’s Col Gaddafi being killed after he was driven from power in 2011.¹⁰⁹

When the director of the CIA, William Burns, was asked to assess Mr. Putin’s mental state, he said he had “been stewing in a combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years” and described his views as having “hardened” and that he was “far more insulated” from other points of view.¹¹⁰

Is the Russian president crazy? That is a question many in the West have asked. But few experts consider it helpful. One psychologist with expertise in the area said a mistake was to assume because we cannot understand a decision like invading Ukraine we frame the person who made it as “mad”. The CIA has a team which carries out “leadership analysis” on foreign decision makers, drawing on a tradition dating back to attempts to understand Hitler. They study background, relationships and health, drawing on secret intelligence.¹¹¹

Another source is read-outs from those who have had direct contact, such as other leaders. In 2014, Angela Merkel reportedly told President Obama that Mr. Putin was living “in another world”. President Macron meanwhile when he sat down with Mr. Putin recently, was reported to have found the Russian leader “more rigid, more isolated” compared with previous encounters.¹¹²

Did something change? Some speculate, without much evidence, about possible ill-health or the impact of medication. Others point to psychological factors such as a sense of his own time running out for him to fulfil what he sees as his destiny in protecting Russia or restoring its greatness. The Russian leader has visibly isolated himself from others during the Covid pandemic and this also may have had a psychological impact. “Putin is likely not mentally ill, nor he has changed, although he is in more of a hurry, and likely more isolated in recent years,” says Ken Dekleva, a former US government physician and diplomat, and currently a senior fellow at the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.¹¹³

But a concern now is that reliable information is still not finding its way into Mr. Putin’s closed loop. His intelligence services may have been reluctant before the invasion to tell him anything he did not want to hear, offering rosy estimates of how an invasion would go and how Russian troops would be received before the war. And this week one Western official said Mr Putin may still not have the insight into how badly things are going for his own troops that Western intelligence has. That leads to concern about how he might react when confronted with a worsening situation for Russia.¹¹⁴

Mr. Putin himself tells the story of chasing a rat when he was a boy. When he had driven it into a corner, the rat reacted by attacking him, forcing a young Vladimir to become the one who fled. The question Western policymakers are asking is what if Mr. Putin feels cornered now? “The question really is whether or not he doubles down with greater brutality and escalates in terms of the weapon systems that he’s prepared to use,” said one western official. There have been concerns he could use chemical weapons or even a tactical nuclear weapon. “The worry is that he does something unbelievably rash in a vicious press-the button way,” says Adrian Furnham.¹¹⁵

Mr. Putin himself may play up the sense that he is dangerous or even irrational – this is a well-known tactic (often called the “madman” theory) in which someone with access to nuclear weapons tries to get his adversary to back down by convincing them that he may well be crazy enough to use them despite the potential for everyone to perish. For Western spies and policymakers understanding Mr. Putin’s intentions and mindset today could not be more important. Predicting his response is pivotal in working out how far they can push him without triggering a dangerous reaction. “Putin’s self concept does not allow for failure or weakness. He despises such things” says Ken Dekleva. “A cornered, weakened Putin is a more dangerous Putin. It’s sometimes better to let the bear run out of the cage and back to the forest.”¹¹⁶

Even though Justin Pelletier, a reservist in the US Army, believes that “Russia has one of the most capable and technological militaries on the planet. They have advanced intelligence, information warfare, cyber warfare and electronic warfare capabilities. Russia has used these technologies in recent years in combat in Syria and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, and is using them in its current invasion of Ukraine”,¹¹⁷ but [t]he old game of spycraft has taken on new technologies, but I think it is useful to remember that the ability to win wars during revolutions in military affairs is generally determined by the ability to integrate new technologies into a country’s military and intelligence operations. Though the Russian military has shown some interesting technological innovations in recent years, it’s not clear whether it has mastered this new way of conducting warfare.”¹¹⁸

But the alleged Russian superiority in cyber warfare, for instance, has been sufficient countered by Ukraine when it disclosed that its intelligence service [had] warned Russia that is has “sources” in the Kremlin as their war drags on with little progress from President Vladimir Putin’s forces. “We have sources in the Kremlin, but we need jets!” Ukraine’s intelligence service wrote on Twitter on Monday, in a post that included a link to an interview from its chief Kyrylo Budanov.¹¹⁹

Budanov told Coffee or Die Magazine in a recent interview via a translator that Ukraine’s “sources are everywhere,” saying his intelligence agency has people working for Ukraine in “the army, in the political circles, as well as administration of the president.” He told the magazine that Ukraine’s access to its undercover sources and cyber intelligence allowed it to understand more about Russia’s plans of attack and its military complex. Budanov told Coffee or Die Magazine that two examples of Ukraine’s ability to rely on its sourcing to launch preemptive strikes on Russian targets are recent attacks on Russian convoys near Kyiv and the destruction of a Russian landing ship near Mariupol. Budanov told the magazine that Ukraine has been able to keep an eye on Russia’s military plans, and received help from Western allies like the US and UK. “We have made considerable progress in cyber intelligence,” he told the magazine. “We see the letters and all they write.”¹²⁰

In an attempt to find a cause of Russia’s military blunders, Russian military’s counterintelligence division has ordered a hunt for breaches in Russia’s domestic security agency, the FSB, experts told Insider.¹²¹

But within Russia’s national security establishment there is also a belief that the same non-kinetic instruments – subversion, corruption, disinformation, misdirection – can accomplish the desired results without the need for any shots being fired. This ‘political war’ model is currently in favour because it reflects the degree to which NATO and the West are stronger by every objective index, yet as a constellation of democracies vulnerable to the kind of measures a ruthless authoritarianism is able to employ.¹²²

Russia’s intelligence services are the front-line soldiers in Moscow’s non-kinetic political war on the West. As such, no wonder Putin continues to hold them in such regard. Yet for all that, they may also prove to be his Achilles heel. Their aggressive interference in the West has not gone unnoticed and has generated a political backlash in Europe and North America. But in many ways they pose a more serious risk in Moscow. The competitiveness that he has fostered, combined with the way he himself is clearly increasingly unreceptive to having his ideas and prejudices questioned, now also means that they vie to tell him what he wants to hear. As a result, Putin has already made serious and costly mistakes, such as his intervention into the Donbass, which he was assured would lead to a quick capitulation by Kiev. The scope for further, even more serious errors are very real. Intelligence agencies ought to be able and willing to speak their ‘best truth’ to power; when that is no longer the case, then policy-making risks becoming erratic and we are all in trouble.¹²³

The Political Factor

The second school of thought was actually of the view that while intelligence failure on the Russian part is indisputable as evinced by its empirical encounters in the battlefield in Ukraine the issue of the political dimension of this failure cannot be left out of consideration for the light it can shed on the holistic or composite understanding of the crisis faced by Russia in Ukraine.

Jeffrey Edmonds, a retired Lt. Col. In the US Army Reserve with a record of active duty for over 25 years, a former Director for Russia on the National Security Council staff during the Obama administration and currently a senior analyst on CAN’s Russia Studies Program, argued that the reason for the intelligence failure should actually be traced to the Russian political leadership with Putin at the very top.

In an interesting piece written by him, he argued that the fundamental cause of the Russian military poor performance must be laid at the feet of the Russian leadership itself. “The fundamental mistake made at the leadership level that carried down to the lowest ranks was an underestimation of the lengths Ukraine’s leadership, military, and people would go to defend it. Putin’s speech about the nature of Ukraine and its current leadership, purportedly consisting of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, was apparently not just propaganda. It betrayed at least some of his real thoughts: that the Ukrainian State was little more than an aberration that could not stand up to Russian power. The Russian leadership seems to have believed that Ukraine’s national character was little more than a house of cards that just needed a little shove. Had Putin and Sergei Shoigu, his minister of defense, believed that Ukraine would put up a hearty resistance, they might have employed the considerable power of the Russian military as it was intended, with in-depth planning for complex warfare involving phased and coordinated operations across all domains.¹²⁴

Edmonds said one can lump Russian military failure into two large categories: those that are contingent to the current conflict and set of circumstances surrounding the invasion, and those that are inherent to the Russian military.¹²⁵

The stage was set by Moscow’s inaccurate and chauvinistic assumptions about Ukraine, its leaders, its military, and its people. When these assumptions were paired with a desire to keep the invasion plans secret from those tactical echelons that were ordered to execute it, we can start to understand the disastrous Russian military operations during the opening days.¹²⁶

In the days leading up until the invasion, the Kremlin signaled limited intentions towards Ukraine while surrounding the country with troops from three directions all the while Putin was disparaging the notion that Ukraine was a legitimate and sovereign country. When the order was finally given to proceed along multiple axes entailing an invasion of half of Europe’s largest country, Russian military staff had little time to prepare. False assumptions from the Russian political and military leadership about the ease of invading Ukraine, coupled with a desire to keep the invasion secret, denied the Russian military the ability to prepare for war in the way that it had trained for countless times before.¹²⁷

Carl von Clausewitz, in On War, discussed the need to understand the war upon which one is embarking and the difficulty of aligning political and military objectives, coupled with the challenge of defining the scale and effort required for a military campaign. Given the haphazard way in which Russian operations were executed during the opening weeks, the leadership expected a wholly different type of war than the one Russian forces have experienced so far. Clausewitz also notes that the end calculation of what level of effort is required is not objective but relies on “the qualities of mind and character of the men making the decision.” It would be difficult to find a better example of how the faulty views of one person could so straightforwardly bring about the initial failures of an operation than Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.¹²⁸

Putin’s erroneous assumptions likely justified the decision, by him, to keep the invasion largely secret from the Russian people and probably many in the leadership. Additionally, the unprecedented public sharing by the United States and other countries of the intelligence about the impending invasion may have complicated Putin’s timing and planning. If this invasion was to be easy, a quick result would forgo the need to prepare the population for an extended conflict. The logic would be that it would also limit Western responses since any punitive actions would be after the fact and lack credibility and sustainability. Installing even a partially legitimate puppet government in Kyiv would both support the narrative given to the Russian domestic population and frustrate attempts by the West to exact severe punishments on Russia.¹²⁹

At a more fundamental level, the soldiers themselves were likely shocked by suddenly finding themselves first, at war, and second, against a capable opponent. Interviews with captured Russian officers and enlisted personnel suggest that the operation and its scope were likely not shared at the tactical level. For those of us who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, every soldier, staffer, and commander understood where they were going, the danger they might face, and at least the rough outlines of the types of missions they were going to undertake. While there are an infinite number of surprises in war, we all knew we were going to combat. Turning to the Russian military’s experience thus far in Ukraine, it is apparent that this process of emotional and mental preparation for war was missing.¹³⁰

The lack of understanding and mental preparation of Russian troops, coupled with the initial results of the campaign, appear to be creating some impetus for some desertion within the Russian military. This is not to say that the Russian military is preparing to dissolve and retreat to Russia. Having some degree of desertion, soldiers in ones or twos, should not be unexpected, especially in a war between two countries with such deep connections. It’s another problem altogether for the Russian military when we start seeing sets of vehicles, representing an entire small unit, fully fueled and functional but with no crew.¹³¹

There is a lot of speculation about how the rest of the Russo-Ukrainian War will unfold. Will this turn into a long, drawn-out stalemate in the east, or will Russia be able to recover from its initial failures and take advantage of its new operational situation and achieve the Kremlin’s revised strategic objectives? What is Ukraine’s strategic goal, now that it has survived Russia’s ham-fisted attempt to snuff out its existence? Motivated by its recent victory in defending Kyiv and blooding Russia’s forces, will Ukraine attempt to drive Russian forces out of the east entirely? Perhaps in the weeks or months ahead Russia will have an exhausted military that culminates without achieving even Putin’s minimalist objectives — whatever those may be. As Cathal Nolan notes, it is often “exhaustion of morale and materiel rather than finality through battles” that decide the outcomes of wars.¹³²

Russia military analysts have their work cut out for them in explaining the early failures of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I have attempted to provide an explanation for how some of the contingent political factors contributed to the Russian military’s poor performance. A portion of the failure is a result of incorrect political assumptions that limited military planning and operational expectations. But this does not explain nearly all of the failures. What appear to be inherent weaknesses in the Russian military and in need of further analysis are the clear lack of effective command and control, an overly timid air force, and poor tactical performance on basic unit-level skills, to name a few. The obvious second half of this analysis is the performance of the Ukrainian military.¹³³

Given that this is not the war Russia planned and trained for, it is difficult to say how it would have performed in a conflict it did prepare for — one against the United States and NATO. This is just the beginning of understanding and properly preparing for Russian military power — or the lack thereof — going forward and the implications it will have for the United States, NATO, and Russia’s neighboring countries.¹³⁴

But it was not only the Russian military strength that was either overrated or underestimated by the US strategic quarters, the US equally underrated the Ukrainians. Indeed, it was a widespread belief that Ukrainians in particular will not be able to withstand the superior firepower of the Russians. But when Ukraine showed their ability to resist Russia, the reason was quickly ascribed to the support given by the US and its European allies (certain NATO members). Of course, the US and NATO helped Ukraine a great deal, but this was as a result of the surprising prowess of resistance or spirit of fight-back that Ukrainians displayed.

Top U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that they misjudged Russia’s military strength prior to that country’s invasion of Ukraine, including failing to recognize Russia had a “hollow force” that would struggle against fierce Ukrainian resistance.  They estimated that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s conventional forces will take “years” to recover as a war that has seen thousands of Russian weapons destroyed, thousands of troop casualties and nearly a dozen generals killed continues. “What we did not see from the inside was sort of this hollow force, lack of NCO corps, lack of leadership training, lack of effective doctrine,” Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier told the Senate Armed Services Committee.¹³⁵

Prior to the war, which is nearing its 12th week, U.S. officials predicted that Kyiv could fall to Russia in a matter of days. Instead, Ukrainian forces thwarted Russian attempts to take the capital, forcing Russia to retreat and refocus its efforts on the southeastern Donbas region. Ukraine’s latest estimate of Russian battlefield losses tallies about 26,000 casualties and the destruction of more than 1,000 tanks, more than 2,800 armored personnel vehicles, more than 300 planes and helicopters, and more. Those numbers could be overestimates fueled in part by the parallel information war between Ukraine and Russia.¹³⁶

Berrier said his agency estimates that eight to 10 Russian generals have been killed in the war and agreed with Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s suggestion that’s because they don’t have lower-ranking officers they can trust to carry out orders on the front lines. Ukrainian officials have placed the number of Russian generals killed at 12. While Berrier said the war appears to now be in a “stalemate,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who testified alongside Berrier, suggested Russian military’s weakness could lead to Putin becoming more volatile. “The reality that Putin faces a mismatch between his ambitions and Russia’s current conventional military capabilities likely means the next few months could see us moving along a more unpredictable and potentially escalatory trajectory,” Haines said.¹³⁷

In addition to misjudging Russian capabilities ahead of the war, U.S. officials, including Berrier at a previous hearing, have attributed their faulty prediction on Kyiv falling to underestimating Ukrainians’ will to fight. But on Tuesday, Berrier sparred with Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, when asked about the intelligence community’s struggle assessing will to fight. King also cited overestimates about the now-defunct Afghan forces’ will to fight the Taliban. “There was never an intelligence community assessment that said the Ukrainians lacked the will to fight,” Berrier said. “Those assessments talked about their capacity to fight.” Pressed further by King, Berrier acknowledged the assessments about Kyiv being overrun were “grossly wrong,” but still held the issue wasn’t U.S. analyses about Ukrainians’ resolve, adding, “I think the intelligence community did a great job” predicting the invasion.¹³⁸

“How can you possibly say that when we were told explicitly Kyiv would fall in three days and the government of Ukraine would fall in two weeks,” King shot back. “If you don’t concede there was a problem on this, then we’ve got a problem.”¹³⁹ Asked how Russian losses in the war affect the overall threat from Moscow, both Berrier and Haines said it will take “years” for Russia to rebuild its conventional forces and replace the equipment and soldiers it’s lost. “The overall threat level is not so much changed as it is the question of how it’s evolving,” Haines added. “The ground combat forces have been degraded considerably. … That may end up meaning that they have greater reliance on asymmetric tools during this period. So they may rely more on things like cyber, nuclear precision, etc.”¹⁴⁰

This position is not far from what Elena Grossfeld had earlier said that “perhaps what we are seeing is not intelligence, but rather a policymaker failure”.¹⁴¹

In order to accurately assess why President Vladimir Putin concluded that he could invade and occupy Ukraine, it is necessary to consider how Russian officials understood the Ukrainian population and its political, economic and social structure on the eve of the invasion.¹⁴²

The KGB’s Fifth Service had been responsible for counterintelligence in the territories of the former Soviet Union. When the KGB became the FSB in the 1990s, and these territories became independent states, the Fifth Service transitioned into an intelligence agency targeting Russia’s neighbours. Its Department for Operational Information is responsible for compiling data on Russia’s ‘near abroad’, and the Ninth Directorate, targeting Ukraine, has been overseeing the gathering of intelligence on Ukrainian society to inform Russian decision-making. Its February 2022 surveys reveal much about how the Kremlin assessed the resilience of Ukrainian society.¹⁴³

According to the polling data, Ukrainians in early February were, by and large, pessimistic about the future and apathetic about politics, and did not trust politicians, political parties or the majority of Ukraine’s domestic institutions. Their main concerns were overwhelmingly inflation and the cost of living, with both perceived to be rising.¹⁴⁴

Trust in the office of the president sat at 27%, with 67% distrustful of the presidency. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had poor approval ratings at −34, but a high proportion of Ukrainians polled still professed that they would vote for him over other candidates. The Ukrainian Army, both regular and reserve, was highly trusted, with 68% of the population supportive, as were military veterans, while regional and municipal governments were comparatively well-trusted with over 40% of the population having a favourable opinion of them. However, other institutions enjoyed approval figures that ranged from mediocre to poor, including the police at 28% and domestic security services at 23%. Trust in the Rada – the Ukrainian parliament – and in political parties was abysmal, at 11% and 8% respectively. And when it came to willingness to serve in the military or otherwise resist a foreign invasion, 40% of respondents stated that they would not defend Ukraine.¹⁴⁵

The population notably had a high opinion of the military’s capabilities, although this is worryingly divergent from the assessment of professional military analysts. 51% of respondents believed that the Ukrainian Army had the capacity to repel an invasion force, despite Ukrainian technical capabilities being decisively outmatched and outnumbered by those deployed by Russia. They also for the most part did not believe that the Russian military build-up – of which 90% of those surveyed were aware – would necessarily result in invasion. These expectations are in the process of being shattered.¹⁴⁶

Other points of Russian leverage were also identified in the survey conducted for the FSB. More than half the Ukrainian population was assessed as having a favourable opinion of the church, despite those parishes which consider themselves a part of the Moscow Patriarchy’s jurisdiction being heavily penetrated by Russian intelligence. The extensive mapping of how different political figures and parties were perceived also provided the FSB with an indication of which ones to prioritise for co-option, coercion, marginalisation or elimination. Notably, when looked at from a national perspective, the Ukrainian population appeared to possess only a moderate level of resolve. However, when broken down by region – north, south, east and west – it becomes clear that attitudes in the south and east of the country exhibit much less faith in the Ukrainian state.¹⁴⁷

These trends will have been factored into Russia’s invasion planning, and the implications are worth considering. It is notable that Putin, in his pre-invasion televised address, spoke extensively about the failures of Ukrainian governance in terms that mirrored the picture painted by the FSB’s surveys. The institutions in which Ukrainians have the most faith – the armed forces – are precisely those against which Russia can act most rapidly and decisively. High casualties and the isolation of Ukrainian military units short of air cover may see Russian armoured thrusts bypass centres of resistance, disabusing the population of their military’s defensive capacity.¹⁴⁸

The problem with surveys of social attitudes is that they are a snapshot of a moment in time. In stable conditions, trends in the data can suggest the trajectory of public sentiment, and the FSB has social trends data for Ukraine going back as far as 2006. But a seismic shift of context can cause major variations in sentiment and attitudes. Air attacks, even when limited to precision strikes on military targets, have historically been perceived extremely negatively by civilian populations subjected to them, who may also not fully understand the difference between area bombardment and military targeting. This often inspires intense hatred of the attacker and stiffens the resolve to resist. Likewise, military casualties in the face of an enemy ground invasion can make a population more determined to resist, so long as resistance does not appear hopeless. Ukraine’s small but symbolically important tactical victories like the retaking of Antonov airport gain a wider significance when looked at in this light.¹⁴⁹

If Russia hoped that shock and awe in the destruction of the Ukrainian military might deter resistance, historical experience points to the opposite result. Thus, while the FSB survey may have been accurate in measuring opinions at the time it was conducted, it told the Russians little about how sentiments would evolve in the aftermath of an invasion.¹⁵⁰

The FSB-commissioned surveys also highlighted the traditional regional disparity in Ukraine between the eastern and western parts of the country. The FSB’s Ninth Directorate has mapped out occupation administrations for oblasts (regions) east of the Dnieper, but it has not done so west of the river, other than for Kyiv. And yet, if Russia only has a weak hold on the west of the country, the western parts could remain a long-term vector for resistance groups that will continue to contest Russia’s invasion.¹⁵¹

Given the significant gamble revealed by Russia’s own assessments of the human terrain in which it is operating, it is evident that occupation could prove exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, if Russia finds that it is facing stiff resistance and insurgent attacks, it is likely to ramp up the use of firepower in urban areas. While this may remove tactical obstacles, it is unlikely to win the trust of a politically distrustful population. If Russia cannot prevent a prolonged insurgency commanded from Western Ukraine, it is possible that Russian forces may become stretched, increasing their vulnerability and presenting Putin with the prospect of a bloody failure. If the examples of Chechnya and Syria are any guide, Russian planners will likely transition from promising good governance to applying ruthless repression.¹⁵²

But in what may be likened to an icing on the cake and what may be viewed as a reverse engineering in thinking or counterfactual approach to the debate about intelligence failure, was what  Neveen Abdalla, Philip Davies, Kristian Gustafson, Dan Lomas, and Steven Wagner, wrote in a joint article where they asserted that it is easier to jump to the conclusion about “intelligence failure” than to examine the very drivers and processes that might have led to such a “failure”¹⁵³ 

Almost every descent into war comes with speculation, accusations, and counter-accusations of intelligence failure. And, indeed, it is obvious to note that intelligence agencies are most often criticized when things apparently go wrong. Politicians especially enjoy the deflective properties of the term “intelligence failure.” It redirects attention from poor political decisions toward the usually anonymous technocrats of the intelligence world, a community as consistently doubted and demonized in the public discussions as it is lauded and lionized. Since the Bush administration’s dissembling over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, intelligence communities derided the public use of intelligence products. Once bitten, twice shy. The role of intelligence during the run-up to, and since, the invasion of Ukraine represents an entirely new chapter in the political and diplomatic use of intelligence in international affairs. This is for two distinct but related reasons. First, the year preceding the Russian invasion represents a resounding and instructive success in a branch of intelligence more notorious for its miscalls: strategic warning intelligence. Second, decades of growing public transparency about intelligence, paired with unprecedented transformations in the capabilities and availability of open-source intelligence, made it possible for politicians, diplomats, and defense communities to reveal, challenge and warn of Russia’s warlike preparations and intentions.¹⁵⁴

Successful warning offered lead time to assist, equip, and train the Ukrainians in their defensive preparations. Western governments were willing to declassify information and assessments to support warnings of imminent Russian aggression. They, and media organizations, also drew from open-source intelligence instead of averring obliquely to unspecified secret sources to make their warnings more compelling to the public and allied governments. This made it possible to seize the initiative from Russian attempts at denial, deception, and prevarication, refuting and discrediting such efforts before they could happen through a policy of pre-emptive “prebuttals.” While the invasion could perhaps not be prevented, this live case study represents a step-change that demonstrates the positive use of intelligence for “impact.”¹⁵⁵

The authors argued that [i]n almost every conflict and crisis, accusations of “intelligence failure” arise almost automatically. This may be to allocate or shift blame, and it often appears that strategic warning is particularly susceptible to both. Warning intelligence utilizes the ‘indicators and warning’ methodology in which one tries to identify the detectable footprint of concealed intentions and capabilities. No system is perfect, and the risk of surprise persists, as cases like the Argentine attempted seizure of the Falklands in 1982 and the successful Russian conquest of the Crimea in 2014 attest.¹⁵⁶

Warning is always, however, a judgment call. Despite the impressive abilities demonstrated by Western allies to detect Russian activities and the willingness to share that information, not all allies and partners reached the same conclusions. They also shared this data and their assessments with their Ukrainian counterparts who, as we shall see, struggled with their own appreciation of the situation. Naturally, while more pieces of the jigsaw have yet to emerge, the feast of open-source — and often real-time — information on Moscow’s military build-up gave an apparently solid foundation for assessment. The role of the private sector and the wider open-source community allowed even journalists and the public to watch Russia’s buildup. Imagery from U.S. space technology company Maxar, and collected social media posts portrayed a very public build-up of Russian forces, a picture no doubt even clearer to those with access to state-based intelligence capabilities. One might conclude that the warning should have been obvious, as Russia’s build-up took place in plain sight. But while detecting capabilities — personnel, equipment, infrastructure — is relatively straightforward, assessing intent is not. For the latter, the warning analyst must look for and recognize actions that the adversary would not otherwise take unless they intended to invade.¹⁵⁷

Assessments from the Western powers provided stark reading, coming on top of Russian military exercises in 2021. In April, Russia conducted a “surprise check” of its southern and western fronts, in response to supposedly aggressive moves by the United States and NATO allies, sparking fears that conflict was likely. “We’re now seeing the largest concentration of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders since 2014,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a meeting at NATO headquarters, leading President Joe Biden to reaffirm U.S. commitments to Ukraine. At the time, analysts suggested the numbers of Russian troops exceeded the numbers involved in the 2014 annexation of Crimea, with Ukrainian sources suggesting as many as 80,000 troops.¹⁵⁸

Though Moscow’s ultimate intentions were unclear, Western intelligence officials were fully aware of the military build-up. Intelligence briefings seen by the Washington Post in December 2021 showed that U.S. officials believed that Russia had deployed 70,000 troops, and would be capable of deploying up to 175,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, comprising 100 battalion tactical groups and capable of an offensive in early 2022. Despite the build-up, the deployments were, officials said, designed to “obfuscate intentions and to create uncertainty.” This intelligence picture formed the basis of Blinken’s warning to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during talks in Copenhagen that Russia would face “serious consequences” if an invasion took place.¹⁵⁹

UK officials became increasingly concerned about the prospect of an invasion around the same time, as key or high-profile units deployed for Zapad-21 did not redeploy back to their home locations, but rather remained in Belarus, along with large ammunition stockpiles. Satellite imagery revealed the gradual build-up of Russian troops and, crucially, the deployment of supporting units needed to sustain an invasion. U.S. officials were also concerned about the distribution of medical supplies, while Estonia’s foreign intelligence service (Välisluureamet) pointed to large-scale operations. “In our assessment, the Russian Armed Forces are ready to embark on a full-scale military operation against Ukraine from the second half of February,” said their annual report. “Once military readiness has been achieved, only a political decision is required to launch the operation.” Estonian estimates suggested there were upwards of 150,000 troops, deploying from across Russia’s military districts. “This is,” officials concluded, “the single largest military build-up by Russia in the past 30 years.”¹⁶⁰

Nonetheless, there were differences across NATO allies. Speaking to journalists in March, France’s Chief of the Defense Staff Thierry Burkhard suggested that a Russian invasion was “part of the options” in 2021. Indeed, French officials maintained that any attack, if likely, would be delayed pending “favorable weather conditions,” disagreeing with U.S. and U.K. counterparts over the likely outcome. “The Americans said that the Russians were going to attack,” said Burkhard. “Our services thought rather than the conquest of Ukraine would have a monstrous cost and that the Russians had other options.” Burkhard has suggested that French military intelligence only came round to the view that an attack was imminent having received intelligence from NATO allies the evening before the attack. In March, it was reported that Gen. Eric Vidaud, director of military intelligence, would leave his post prematurely, sources citing “insufficient” briefing on the Russian threat to Ukraine. French officials were not alone in underestimating the danger. Security sources told Der Spiegel that the head of Germany’s BND, Bruno Kahl, had to be rescued by a hastily arranged Special Forces mission, having been in Ukraine for scheduled talks when the invasion started.¹⁶¹

Projecting one’s own reasoning into the mind of the adversary is a common analytical error. Indeed, the French may yet be proved right in that the invasion has already come at a “monstrous cost” to the Russians, at least to contemporary European eyes. In this case, the French failed to understand what costs the adversary was willing to take to achieve their aims. The values and concerns of Western governments — economies, jobs, trade, public well-being, popularity, and re-electability — are perhaps not as relevant to Russia’s often-unchallenged strategic calculus. Putin has been far less concerned with civil society and human costs — a common characteristic of authoritarian leadership.¹⁶²

France was not alone in this regard. Armed with British and American assessments in addition to those of his own staff, an intelligence advisor close to Zelensky said that he believed Putin was bluffing until D-Day. He expected Putin would achieve his goals without invading. Zelensky’s approval rating was low, and the political situation was unstable. Why should Russia strike now? Why not wait? Ukrainian advisers fell prey to two critical failings, the first of which was a hesitance to believe that Putin might invade, contrary to good sense. Additionally, this may also have been down to Kyiv’s goals of not causing panic – something Zelensky had said pre-invasion. The second, more cautionary failing was that Kyiv had “anchored” — fixated — on one specific indication of the imminent intent to invade. This indicator was orders for certain tactical preparations that the Ukrainians considered essential for a successful invasion, but which never materialized before Feb. 24. Unfortunately, just because Ukraine would not be so stupid as to launch an operation without such measures, did not mean Russia wouldn’t do so. Thankfully, this anchoring did not undermine Ukraine’s defensive strategy. Perhaps this was a case of hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.¹⁶³

Western analysts may have fallen subject to some analytical pathology in predicting — not unlike the Russians — that Ukraine would fall quickly to the Russian invasion. As some U.S. officials passed to journalists, “a Russian invasion could overwhelm Ukraine’s military relatively quickly, although Moscow might find it difficult to sustain an occupation and cope with a potential insurgency.” They went on to add that an invasion, “would leave 25,000 to 50,000 civilians dead, along with 5,000 to 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 3,000 to 10,000 Russian ones. It could also trigger a refugee flood of one to five million people, mainly into Poland.” Perhaps still stinging from the rapid collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban, there may have been some reluctance to be optimistic about Ukraine’s chances. Still, London and Washington moved to bolster Ukraine’s defenses quickly — and this support made a significant difference in both the physical capacity of Ukraine’s forces and their morale. The estimates on casualties and displaced persons are within the margin of error provided by U.S. officials. In this case, it would be unfair to say Western estimates of the chances of Ukrainian resistance constitute an intelligence failure. This is the paradox of intelligence warning: if analysts warn of a dire event, and this prompts state action which averts it, was the initial estimate wrong? No. The differences in intelligence assessments from Ukraine and various NATO allies highlight the precarious nature of strategic warning.¹⁶⁴

If the warning intelligence success is, essentially, an adept application of methods and techniques a century in the making, the “prebuttal” strategy deployed against Russian disinformation and prevarication represents a significant innovation. Any credible prebuttal effort was going to require carefully thought out but rapid declassification of intelligence for timely publication. Such a campaign aims to bombard the media space with truth — visible, measurable, even tangible data and analysis about the Russian buildup and military campaign. Historically, governments have always declassified sanitized intelligence to support policy decisions or offer alternatives, although the scale and speed of this effort are remarkable. The campaign follows a classic model: it is grounded in truth, it repeats a theme from different angles, and it is well-timed and geared toward a specific objective.¹⁶⁵

The publication of intelligence should not be overplayed, despite its current hype. Moscow may have been forced to respond to intelligence releases, yet the release of information by governments should never, and can never, be seen as part of a strategy to deter an assault. Officials and policymakers also need to be careful with what they release for several reasons. Firstly, the prebuttal approach was successful because the events that officials forecasted came true. Domestically, the reputation of U.S. and U.K. intelligence has been restored after the Iraq fiasco. Recently, however, released assessments have been based on medium to low confidence. As one official said, “It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence when we talk about it. It’s more important to get out ahead of them — Putin specifically — before they do something.” Releasing statements that may turn out to be untrue could impair future use of prebuttal, as it could undermine the trust that has been carefully built up. In other words, releasing low confidence assessments to keep up with Russia’s information games would be counterproductive, and reduce the release of intelligence to mere propaganda. Secondly, preempting Russia might be an important goal, yet revealing information can be just as dangerous, however well disguised the actual source is. Prebuttal remains an important tool, yet source protection will always be paramount.¹⁶⁶

The authors have not actually said anything fundamentally new to compel or warrant re-examination of the facts already established.

First, there was no known reality that can be called “intelligence failure” on the part of the duo (the United States and United Kingdom) or a couple of other countries in the West about Russian intentions in Ukraine. Russian military build-up and movements towards the Ukrainian borders and even in neighbouring Belarus were well known to the Western Alliance mainly through satellite pictures and other intelligence assets which serve as evidence of the Russian intentions. The Western Alliance had sufficient intelligence warning about Russian intentions in Ukraine – with the exception of notable countries like France and Germany.

Second, the hitherto “intelligence failure” referred to took place on the part of Russia and its military planners and political decision-makers. This was made abundantly clear by the net-result of their encounters on the battlefield in Ukraine which fell below all expectations due to many reasons but of which poor intelligence sticks out like a sore thumb.   

Conclusion

The combined intelligence agencies of the Western powers have really gone after the jugular of Russia in the cloak-and-dagger business. Whether they will succeed in cutting the throat in the long run is another matter entirely. But what has already taken place so far is an indication of the hard times Russia will have in defeating and conquering Ukraine, if ever such a scenario can come to pass.

Putin is a prisoner of Plato’s Cave. He voluntarily exiled himself into the surreal world of Plato’s Cave. He, therefore, lives in a bunker; in siege mentality of his own making; or in a silo that has to be constantly maintained with the false view of the world fed to him via policy advisory and intelligence briefs by his subordinates. Putin is not necessarily a “mad” man at all. He has merely created a situation or an environment around him that makes him look like a “mad” man to the unwary analyst and the gullible public. But such environment is not necessarily a sane one in comparison with the real world where the good, the bad and the ugly coexist or put side-by-side for a leader to choose from, a kind of menu list of reality or realistic options.

Putin is suffering from a messianic disease of megalomania in which he want to resurrect the old Soviet Union where Russia is the core – precisely like the Hitlerian or Nazist ideology of the superiority of the Aryan race. Putin most probably sees himself as modern Vladimir Lenin in his quest for world socialist revolution in which the Soviet Union would be the Alpha and Omega, like …. in the famed Animal Farm by George Orwell. This messianic megalomania is the driver of the imperialist ambitions that have come to characterized Russian foreign policy in the last one and half decade since Putin came to power, in the invasions of other breakaway republics from the former Soviet Union.

Putin must be put in this broad situational or environmental contextual framework to see where he belongs in the canvas in the picturesque presented by Russian quest hegemonic sphere of influence from the bodies of breakaway republics from the former Soviet Union and for the necessary understanding of the insights into the working of his mind. Unfortunately, that hegemonic sphere of influence is very limited and can even be said to be collapsing already on his head because the foundation lack the strong blocks of sustainability and coupled with the level of resistance from those breakaway republics. Putin may have gotten away with “blue murder” in several instances including the annexation of Crimea and fomenting troubles in Donbas oblast in eastern Ukraine, etc. But he has come to meet his comeuppance, his Nemesis, or his equal, in Volodymyr Zelensky who had hitherto been derided as a spineless comedian fool. The Ukrainians, hitherto regarded as a kind of jelly fish in Russian waters, have come out like sea lions and sharks to give Putin a good fight and run for his money.

2014 invasion of Ukraine was a dress rehearsal. The Ukrainians in 2022 were no longer the same Ukrainians of 2014, proverbially speaking. They have matured and are no longer willing to bend backward for Russia to ride roughshod over them. They have found the courage to stand up to Russia and spit at its face. They are no longer willing to concede an inch of their territories to the Russian anymore. Hence the running from pillar to pole by the Russians to capture and hold any territory they can lay their hands upon. The battlefield has become largely unfavourable to the Russians including the international political-diplomatic domains.

It is often said that intelligence is the first and last lines of defense. But intelligence has failed Putin. Or put in another way: Putin failed to learn the first principle of intelligence: don’t be a prisoner of what you want to see or hear – rather be a freedom fighter or liberator from what you don’t want to see or hear. Reality has come home to knock on Putin’s doors and drag him out as an incompetent leader who is a prisoner of only what he wants to see, hear and believe from his subordinates.

Putin’s Long Table in the Kremlin merely shows he is so detached and distant from the world of reality. It is a product of paranoia, morbid fear of his advisers, even of foreign leaders. He cannot sit with people freely. He cannot eat with people because he is so much afraid, even of his own shadow. He fears being killed like Julius Caesar or Macbeth! He is schizophrenic in his fear of reality. Thus he lives in bondage of his own making. In this type of situation, nobody can help him. Only he can help himself by coming out on his own accord from the Plato’s Cave without running back because he cannot bear the sunlight of reality or of truth.

This foible or weakness is a destroyer of men and women’s fate or destiny, casting them into the dustbin of history. Putin is already headed for the dustbin of history.