Head of Britain's GCHQ spy service says some Russian soldiers are refusing to carry out orders
On Wednesday, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) chief Jeremy Fleming said that there’s new intelligence that shows some Russian soldiers in Ukraine have sabotaged their own equipment and accidentally shot down one of their own aircrafts, Reuters is reporting.
“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,” Fleming said in a speech in Canberra at the Australian National University.
“Putin has massively misjudged the situation,” Fleming said. “We believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth.” Reuters was unable to independently confirm GCHQ’s analysis.
Here’s more from the Reuters report:
GCHQ, which gathers communications from around the world to identify and disrupt threats to Britain, has a close relationship with the U.S. National Security Agency and with the eavesdropping agencies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in a consortium called “Five Eyes”.
Russia’s defence ministry says its armed forces are professional and carrying out their duty in Ukraine with considerable success. It says the West has spread lies about the operation in an attempt to bring down Russia.
The United States assesses that Russia is suffering failure rates as high as 60% for some of its precision-guided missiles, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence told Reuters.
Putin was misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Western sanctions have been, U.S. and European officials said on Wednesday. The Kremlin made no immediate comment.
Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people by Ukraine.