The Kremlin strongly pushed back Thursday on U.S. and British intelligence assessments that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been misinformed about his military’s struggles, warning that such a “complete misunderstanding” of the situation in Moscow could have “bad consequences” as the invasion of Ukraine enters its sixth week.
“It turns out that neither the State Department nor the Pentagon have real information about what is happening in the Kremlin,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “They do not understand President Putin, they do not understand the decision-making mechanism, and they do not understand the efforts of our work.”
U.S. intelligence officials released declassified information Wednesday that claimed Putin’s inner circle was closing in on him and there was growing tension between Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield claimed Putin “is being misinformed about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.”
PENTAGON BELIEVES PUTIN ‘HAS NOT BEEN FULLY INFORMED’ ON ASPECTS OF WAR
Much to the chagrin of Moscow, intelligence from other Western nations seemed to validate the statement.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced Thursday his country would host another round of talks between the two warring nations in the coming weeks. The participants will include Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia met Tuesday in Istanbul, where they discussed steps toward ending the conflict. Following the meeting, Russia pledged to scale back its attacks in the capital city of Kyiv and in parts of northern Ukraine, while Ukrainian officials outlined potential concessions of territory occupied by Russia, including a proposal that negotiations over Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, be conducted over a 15-year period.
Despite promises, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia does not appear to be scaling back its military operations.
“Russia has basically lied about its intentions,” Stoltenberg said Thursday, adding that the country should be judged by its actions and not on empty promises.
“According to our intelligence, Russian units are not withdrawing but repositioning,” he said. “Russia is trying to regroup, resupply, and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas region.”
UKRAINE PEACE TALKS END WITH POSSIBLE CRIMEA CONCESSIONS
Putin signed a decree on Thursday ordering 134,500 new conscripts into the army, but the country’s Defense Ministry said the surge of new soldiers had nothing to do with Ukraine. Conscripts’ involvement in the war has been a delicate subject. On March 9, the Defense Ministry acknowledged that some conscripts had been sent to fight in neighboring Ukraine after Putin vehemently denied it numerous times, claiming only professional soldiers were being used and not drafted ones.
Overnight, fighting in several towns and cities in Ukraine continued, with the civilian body count rising alongside “a massive humanitarian crisis that is growing by the second,” the United Nations’s refugee agency said. In total, more than 4 million people have now fled Ukraine, while 6.5 million people are displaced inside the country and another 13 million are trapped or stranded inside and unable to leave.
At least 148 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the Putin-ordered invasion on Feb. 24, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman said. At least 232 other children have been wounded amid the onslaught, Lyudmila Denisova posted on Facebook, adding that the actual number of casualties has not been possible to verify due to the near-constant shelling and missile strikes in multiple areas around the country.
Russian missile strikes on Thursday hit a military unit in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, according to the head of the regional government. At least two people were killed, five were injured, and an administrative building and fuel depot were destroyed.
There were early indications that a humanitarian corridor would be opened from the southern port city of Mariupol, where, almost since the beginning of the war, thousands of residents have been fighting for their homes and city with limited access to food, water, electricity, and weapons. Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that a ceasefire there would start at 10 a.m. local time to allow for people to escape to the west, though similar agreements in the past have not been upheld, and civilians have been fired upon.
Mariupol, a strategic port city, has seen some of the heaviest fighting in the country. Satellite images published this week by U.S. defense contractor Maxar Technologies appeared to show widespread devastation. Images showed that a once-vibrant neighborhood had largely been leveled by Russian artillery shelling and airstrikes. Images also showed what the company said was a grocery store in the western part of the city and a line, hundreds of people deep, waiting for whatever food was left.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a tailored pitch to Australia for more aid, citing the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which killed nearly 300 people in 2014, including 30 Australians, as he called on lawmakers to impose harsher sanctions against Russia and offer more military support. Australia has blamed Russia for the attack on the plane, which was shot down by a missile over Ukraine on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Russia has denied involvement.
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Zelensky said if Russia’s aggression isn’t stopped, it will trigger other countries to invade peaceful neighbors, a claim he has made multiple times to legislative bodies around the world.
