Kremlin rejects US claims that Putin is being misled about Russia’s military failures

Russia on Thursday rejected claims by U.S. intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misled about Russia’s military failures in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at a press briefing on Thursday that “It turns out that neither the State Department nor the Pentagon have real information about what is happening in the Kremlin,” The New York Times reported.

“They do not understand President Putin, they do not understand the decision-making mechanism and they do not understand the efforts of our work,” Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta quoted Peskov as saying.

He added that the Kremlin was concerned about this “complete misunderstanding.”

Peskov’s response comes a day after White House communications director Kate Bedingfield detailed the declassified intelligence, saying, “We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership.”

“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers 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,” she added. 

A U.S. official told The Hill that there is “persistent tension” between Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense “stemming from Putin’s mistrust” of its leadership.  

The Times also noted that this comes weeks after Peskov said that Russian defense officials had disobeyed Putin’s instructions not to send conscripts into battle in Ukraine

The Russian government published a decree signed by Putin on Monday that stated 134,650 Russians who are not already in the military or reserves will be drafted, as its invasion of Ukraine has not been the success the Kremlin had hoped for.