Russian troops sabotaging their own equipment and refusing orders in Ukraine

The Russian President has misjudged the situation in Ukraine, but his advisors are scared of telling him the truth about what is happening on the ground, the head of Britain’s intelligence agency said this Thursday.

“It increasingly looks like Putin has massively misjudged the situation. It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people,” Jeremy Fleming, director of U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, said in a speech in Australia.

Referring to the conflict in Ukraine as Putin’s “personal war,” Fleming said the Russian leader had also underestimated the economic consequences of the sanctions regime as well as Russia’s military capabilities.

“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,” he said.

Fleming did not give any details on how GCHQ or British intelligence officials knew how Putin’s inner circle felt about relaying the details of the invasion to the Russian leader. Fleming’s comments came after newly declassified U.S. intelligence revealed that the Russian president feels he has been misled by Russia’s military leaders, who kept crucial details about the invasion from him over fear of angering him.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told reporters that the failure to tell Putin what was really happening had “resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership.” Despite all of this, Fleming said Thursday that Putin was still trying to follow through on his plan to gain ground in Ukraine. Russian officials said this week that they would scale back their military activity in and around the cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv, an announcement that has been met with skepticism in the West.