The top US general in Europe said Tuesday there “could be” a gap in US intelligence gathering that caused the US to overestimate Russia’s capability and underestimate Ukraine’s defensive abilities before Russia attacked Ukraine.
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month, US intelligence assessed that the country-wide assault could lead to Kyiv falling into Russian hands within days. But Russia’s military has been bogged down around the capital as the war has entered its second month, beleaguered by sustainability and logistics problems, along with an unexpected stiff resistance from Ukrainian fighters.
Testifying at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, US European Command chief Gen. Tod Wolters was asked by Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, if there was an intelligence gap that caused the US to overestimate Russia’s strength and underestimate the Ukrainian defenses.
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WNU Editor: The U.S. government and media narrative in the first few days of the Russian invasion was that Kyiv was going to fall in three days. That the goal was to decapitate the Ukraine government .... Pentagon Believes Putin's Goal Will Be To 'Decapitate' The Ukraine Government And Install His Own (February 24, 2022).
The narrative from the Kremlin has been different, and it has been the same since the start of the invasion. No plans to take-over Ukraine, to defend the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics from “Ukrainian aggression”, and to pursue the “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of the country .... Russian President Putin Announces Special Operations Have Been Launched Against Ukraine (February 24, 2022).
I think the problem with US intelligence and the Pentagon is that they made their own assessment on what were Putin's goals, and then evaluated the Russian military campaign based on that assessment. If they had evaluated the Russian military campaign based on Putin's own stated objectives, I see a different assessment and conlusion.
To begin .... Ukraine's military has been seriously degraded, with its best and experienced fighters are now facing defeat in the Donbas region. The Azov battalion has been wiped out in Marioupol, albeit at the expense of the entire city being destroyed. The entire Luhansk region is now almost entirely under Russian military control. And thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk region are now surrounded and cut off.
The scope of this debacle is probably one of the reasons why Ukraine President Zelensky is pushing the current peace talks, knowing too well that in the next week or two the full extent of this military disaster will become known.
As for storming Ukraine's major cities. In the first week of the war my biggest fear was that the Russian military will use artillery and missile strikes to entirely devastate the centers of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and elsewhere. I bought into the Western media and U.S. government narrative that this was going to happen. That Russian forces were going to storm the cities. It is now 5 weeks into the war, and it is clear (to me) that this was not the Kremlin's objective. It looks like the purpose of this part of the Russian campaign was to put pressure on Kyiv and other cities to tie down the Ukraine military, thereby making resupply efforts to the Ukraine military in the eastern part of the country all but impossible. And the Russian military has been successful. Ukraine forces are tied down around the cities, and there has been no and/or limited resupplies to the eastern part of the country.
So what is next?
After Russia's eastern military campaign is over, I suspect the dynamics of the war are going to shift dramatically. Supply lines will shift and tens of thousands of Russian troops and their Chechen allies in the Donbas will now be free to advance to the central parts of Ukraine with their focus on the city of Dnipro.
Update: This US General is probably right .... US commander estimates nearly three-quarters of Russian forces are dedicated to Ukraine (FOX News). There are approximately 280,000 soldiers in the Russian Army, and according to most estimates there are currently 150,000 to 200,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The Russian military in total numbers almost one million, and I suspect their entire focus right now is to accomplish their objectives in Ukraine.