Signs of military coup in Russia - Robert Lansing Institute
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Russia is showing signs of a military coup. They lie in practically monopolized access and full influence on President Putin by Defense Minister Shoigu, with top defense officials trying to cope with competing centers of power in Kremlin, as Putin is still a formal leader.
Shoigu succeeded in convincing Putin that the FSB (Federal Security Service) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) are responsible for failed military operation in Ukraine. With unlimited influence on Putin now, Shoigu got him to see that Bortnikov’s agency (FSB) should be held responsible for the impact by operation in Ukraine. The latter, in turn, has launched demonstrative reprisals in his agency, to save his own neck, indirectly confirming the arguments by Defense Minister. Unverified reports suggest the 5th FSB Service head, General Sergey Beseda, and his deputies, responsible for work in Ukraine, were interrogated.
Aside from that, unconfirmed reports suggest an investigation has been launched to find out whether the money allocated for pro-Russian organizations and political movements in Ukraine were stolen or misused. Some FSB and SVR officials, by estimates, have spent more than $5 billion, mostly divided between intelligence handlers and those leading Russia-backed political organizations in Ukraine. That resulted in fierce resistance by Ukrainian people the Russian troops met, which was excluded in reports by Russian intelligence to Russia’s political leaders.
Roughly estimated, the Opposition Platform for Life political party leader, Viktor Medvedchuk alone stole nearly $ 1 billion, having escaped from home arrest in Ukraine on the eve of Russia’s military invasion. Shoigu is also trying to persuade Putin to sack the intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin, who initially advocated dialogue with the West, having moderate voice in Kremlin team. Shoigu wants Russia’s SVR (political intelligence) reassigned to defense agency and merged with military intelligence.
Read also: Seeking alternative interlocutors in Russia
An order to pass all SVR’s facilities and agents to the GRU has been drafted, by some estimates. With high presidential aspirations, Shoigu is seeking to exploit the current situation to maximize the concentration of power and gain full control of all ‘siloviki’. He also plans to dominate the FSB to achieve his goal. Some personal bodyguards of the President have been replaced by military intelligence special agents, according to the reports.
Shoigu takes advantage of Putin’s health problems to create an information vacuum around him, adding to his isolation. Russian Defense Ministry played a key role in developing a coronavirus vaccine, and may have managed to set up anti-epidemiology regime in the Kremlin.
There is a high likelihood that quarantine restrictions and social distance when meeting Putin are due to the risks he might be infected, as he’s undergoing chemo or other medical treatment, with low immunity.
With health problems and painkillers that affect his mental state, Putin is sane, reasonable, but prone to irrational, emotional decisions that correspond to his worldview and beliefs, with no logical arguments, disregarding the risks.
Putin is keen on ‘restoring the greatness to Russia’. This task, with symbolic goals to achieve, makes him neglect economic and social problems in Russia. It is unlikely, therefore, the risks of economic crisis under the sanctions imposed on Russia will succeed in affecting Russian President, even if he receives fair information.
President’s health and fear of death, as a result, make him concentrate on the goals to change the course of history, disregarding the methods and ways to achieve them. That approach elevates risk for dangerous decisions. Putin lost most of contacts with his former entourage, with Shoigu free to manipulate him.
Read also: Putin trying to replay Cold War in his favor
From 2008, Putin believes the West is weak, which explains why he took radical decisions (Salisbury case, Khangoshvili, Crimea’s annexation), not fearing serious impact on himself.
Putin has built a system of collective responsibility, excluding open dissent to the decision of the leader. But Shoigu is the only one who is good with that system, with the rest of the Kremlin regime agreeing to it just for fear of punishment. The palace coup is unlikely, therefore, as the Defense Minister has concentrated the power probably to complete the delegation of authorities, with Putin, remaining the head of state, actually losing independence and real authority in the country.We believe Shoigu is also seeking to gain control of Putin’s business circle, to control extrabudgetary finance. Moreover, Shoigu controls Defense Ministry financing, which looks like a state corporation.
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Viktor Zolotov, the head of Russia's National Guard, said on Sunday that his country's military attack in Ukraine is going slower than expected, according to Reuters.
"I would like to say that yes, not everything is going as fast as we would like," Zolotov said at a church service led by Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in remarks posted on the National Guard's website.
As a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zolotov is the most prominent official from the country to contradict the messaging coming from the Kremlin about the operation since attack began on February 24.
As recently as Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin during a televised Security Council Meeting that "everything is going according to plan."
The National Guard is an internal military force of the Russian Federation that works as an independent agency reporting directly to the president. Troops from the National Guard are currently in Ukraine.
Prior to his appointment as the director of the force, Zolotov was the commander of Russian Interior Troops and the one-time head of Putin's personal security force. He has also long been considered to be a member of Putin's inner circle.
During his talk at the Sunday church service, Zolotov attributed Russia not meeting its immediate goals to Ukrainian forces using civilians as shields. Other Russian authorities and the country's state-run media have previously made the same claim.
"...But we are going towards our goal step by step and victory will be for us, and this icon will protect the Russian army and accelerate our victory," Zolotov said, Reuters reported.
On Friday, Shoigu claimed that not only had Russia's plan been executed as expected, but they received more than 16,000 applications from volunteers in the Middle East who wanted to join the attack on Ukraine.
Shoigu also claimed that Russian forces had seized a large number of Ukrainian weapons, including tanks and a substantial amount of artillery.
Ukraine's government has mostly painted a different picture. While the country has been hit hard, authorities have reported on social media about the capture of a number of Russian weapons and vehicles. Many Western media outlets have also characterized the Russian invasion as not meeting the Kremlin's expectations.
Follow our live blog for updates on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia’s military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraine’s capital as residents of other besieged cities held out hope Monday that renewed diplomatic talks might open the way for more civilians to evacuate or emergency supplies to reach them.
A day after expanding the war in Ukraine with an airstrike on a military base close to the Polish border, fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces fired artillery on suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for an invasion in its 19th day.
Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west. A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Two people died after artillery hit a nine-story apartment building in a northern district of the city, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.
Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia’s stalled attempt to take the capital, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.
A fourth round of talks is expected Monday between Ukrainian and Russian officials to discuss getting food, water, medicine and other desperately needed supplies to cities and towns under fire, among other issues, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said. The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remains cutoff despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys.
The hope for a breakthrough came the day after Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine that served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting its defense.
The attack killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and the base’s proximity to the borders of Poland and other NATO members raised the possibility that the Western military alliance could be drawn into the the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.
Ukraine says at least 35 people were killed and 134 injured at a military facility near Lviv.(Credit: CNN Newsource)
Speaking Sunday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “black day,” and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over his country, a plea that the West has said could escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation.
“If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of NATO countries,” Zelenskyy said, urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him directly, a request that has gone unanswered by the Kremlin.
The president’s office reported Monday that airstrikes hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv, and knocked out a television tower in the Rivne region in the northwest. Explosions rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.
Three airstrikes hit the northern city of Chernihiv overnight, and most of the town is without heat. Several areas haven’t had electricity in days. Utility workers are trying to restore power but frequently come under shelling.
The government announced plans for new humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors, although ongoing shelling caused similar efforts to fail in the last week.
Despite Russia’s punishing assault on multiple fronts, Moscow’s troops did not make major advances over the past 24 hours, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Monday morning. The Russian Defense Ministry gave a different assessment, saying its forces had advanced 11 kilometers (7 miles) and reached five towns north of Mariupol.
Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces shot down four Ukrainian drones overnight, including a Bayraktar drone. Ukraine’s Bayraktar drones, made by NATO member Turkey, have become a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s accusations that the U.S. and its allies pose an existential security threat to Russia.
U.S. President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Mosc ow evade Western economic sanctions.
The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said the death toll includes at least 85 children are among them. Millions more people have fled their homes.
While Russia’s military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine’s, Russian troops have faced stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. With their advance slowed in several areas, they have bombarded several cities with unrelenting shelling, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.
Ukrainian and European leaders have pushed with limited success for Russia to grant safe passage to civilians trapped by fighting. Ukrainian authorities said Sunday that more than 10 humanitarian corridors were set to open, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol. But such promises have repeatedly crumbled, and there was no word late Sunday on whether people were able to use the evacuation routes.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol was “simply immense” and that hundreds of thousands of people faced extreme shortages of food, water and medicine.
“Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell,” the Red Cross said in a statement. “Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated.”
The fight for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could help Russia establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The US sends more aid to Ukraine as Russian forces continue to inch closer to Ukraine's capitol.(Source: CNN, FROM FACEBOOK, MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES, TWITTER, etc. )
That fight expanded Sunday to the sprawling facility at Yavoriv, which has long been used to train Ukrainian soldiers, often with instructors from the United States and other countries in the Western alliance. More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the site. In addition to the fatalities, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said 134 people were wounded in the attack.
The base is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border and appears to be the westernmost target struck during Russia’s 18-day invasion. It has hosted NATO training drills, making it a potent symbol of Russia’s longstanding fears that the expansion of the 30-member Western military alliance to include former Soviet states threatens its security — something NATO denies.
Ina Padi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian who crossed the border with her family, was taking shelter at a fire station in Wielkie Oczy, Poland, when she was awakened by blasts Sunday morning that shook her windows.
“I understood in that moment, even if we are free of it, (the war) is still coming after us,” she said.
Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150 kilometers (94 miles) north of Romania and 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Hungary, two other NATO allies.
NATO said Sunday that it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of U.S. troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West would respond if Russia’s strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any NATO members, even accidentally.
___
Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
(Reuters) — Two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has become apparent that Russia’s military is experiencing failures — both technical and strategic — that have surprised analysts who study one of the world’s largest military forces.
There are multiple issues one could look at in relation to Russia’s poor military performance in Ukraine to date, such as being unable to effectively counter Ukrainian drones, or failing to deliver on the kind of cyberwarfare expected.
But failings in three specific categories warrant a closer look.
The first issue that became quickly apparent was the poor performance of Russia’s armed forces. There has been, at times, a complete lack of logistical support for Russia’s forces on the front lines, bogging down the Russian advance and at times completely stalling it.
There have been numerous reports of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers running out of fuel, leading Russian soldiers to request, commandeer and steal diesel to continue progress.
Russian soldiers, many of them conscripts, have been forced to forage for food, with reports of soldiers being forced to steal chickens, and special forces soldiers breaking into shops to loot food.
Rations provided to Russia’s troops have reportedly only been sufficient for a few days, and video has emerged claiming some rations are seven years out of date.
Russia had a significant amount of time to prepare its invasion and move logistical support into place, with months of open buildup. But scenes of enormous, stalled convoys being unable to progress speak volumes about Russia’s astonishing mismanagement.
This series of logistical failures are as embarrassing for Russia as they are beneficial for Ukraine.
There have also been extraordinary communication failures, both between military units, and to soldiers prior to the conflict. Reports emerged following the initial stages of the invasion that many Russian soldiers were completely unaware they were invading.
Instead, captured Russian soldiers claim they were under the impression they were taking part in a military exercise, up until the moment they came under fire from Ukrainian units.
Many Russian communications have also been transmitted over unencrypted media. Russian bombers transmitting over open high-frequency radio have had their conversations listened in on by amateur radio enthusiasts.
Even communication between Russian units on the ground are being transmitted in the open, leading to easy interception by Ukraine. Overall, this paints a clear picture of Russian incompetence.
To top it all off, the lack of morale (with many Russian soldiers surrendering or abandoning vehicles and equipment) has only exacerbated the effects of Russia’s poor military performance.
One of Russia’s most significant failures, and potentially the most damaging to its campaign, has been its inability to achieve air superiority.
In military terms, this refers to a state having a sufficient degree of dominance to conduct aerial operations (such as close air support or air strikes) without significant interference from opposing forces and air defence systems.
Before the invasion began, it was widely anticipated Russia would quickly achieve air superiority. This is because on paper, Russia’s air force is vastly superior to Ukraine’s.
Prior to the invasion, Ukraine possessed Europe’s seventh-largest air force. While this sounds potent — and in relative terms, it is — it amounts to some 200 aircraft of all types (fighters, close air support, helicopters and transport aircraft). In comparison, Russia possesses about 1,500 combat aircraft alone.
The backbone of Ukraine’s air force are older Soviet era fighters, namely 50 MiG-29s and 32 Su-27s. Meanwhile, Russia employs modern versions of Soviet aircraft, such as the Su-30, Su-33 and Su-35 (updated variants of the Su-27 Ukraine operates).
Russia also has modern strike aircraft such as the Su-34 (another update on the Su-27, optimised for strike operations) as well as long-range strategic bombers such as the Tu-22, Tu-95 and Tu-160.
However, images have emerged suggesting Russia’s strike aircraft are reliant on generic, consumer-grade GPS units. If this is true, it only reinforces Russia’s lack of capability.
Just prior to the war, U.S. Intelligence anticipated an invasion would commence with a blistering assault by Russia on Ukraine’s air power.
Yet two weeks into the conflict, Ukraine still reportedly possesses the bulk of its air and missile defences. This has raised questions about why Russia did not make full use of its air power. Is it holding back in case the conflict broadens?
Regardless of the reason, Russia’s lack of air superiority early in the conflict may be one of its most significant strategic errors, to the benefit of Ukrainian defenders.
Russian aircraft are struggling to provide the support needed by Russian ground forces, giving Ukrainian forces an opening to counter Russia’s advance.
Russia’s high-tech offensive capabilities have also demonstrated lacklustre performance.
The initial stages of the invasion included a strategic bombardment of Ukrainian targets using cruise missiles and Iskander short-range ballistic missiles.
Reports indicate that as of March 1, Russia had fired as many as 320 missiles, the majority being Iskander short-range ballistic missiles — making this the largest and most intense short-range ballistic missile bombardment between two states.
The Iskander is estimated to have a range of 500 kilometers and an accuracy of 2-5 meters. Prior to the invasion, it was expected to be an effective and devastating weapon system. Intriguingly, its performance has been lacking.
For example, Iskanders were used to attack Ukrainian air bases, to destroy runways and prevent Ukraine’s air force from operating effectively. But the previously vaunted accuracy of the Iskander appears far less impressive than what was anticipated.
As the conflict has progressed, Russia has made more frequent use of lower-tech weapons systems, such as unguided “dumb” bombs and cluster munitions. This might indicate Russia has either expended its limited number of high-tech weaponry, or is holding back reserves in case the conflict escalates.
The Ukrainian air force remains in the fight, despite all odds. Russia will no doubt learn from its issues and attempt to correct them. And it does still have the advantage with numbers, in terms of both troops and equipment.
However, it’s likely the conflict can’t be sustained for long on Russia’s part, particularly with the impact sanctions are having on the Russian economy. For Ukraine, the delays caused by Russia’s errors may well lead to better outcomes.
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