Putin Calling the Shots Without Listening to Military: Think Tank

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is making key decisions about Moscow's grinding war in Ukraine without substantial influence from Russia's top military officials, according to a new report.

The Kremlin chief increasingly makes his decisions in isolation, concluded a new finding from the U.S.-based nonprofit global-policy think tank RAND Corporation. "Putin [is] making key decisions largely on his own without substantial influence from the Russian General Staff," it added.

Western experts have repeatedly said that Russia's military in Ukraine has several key failings, including a fear of passing bad news or negative battlefield reports up the command chain to superiors.

Putin and his closest advisers "appear to have made little use of economic or military expertise," the report added. The Kremlin leader "has narrowed the funnel of information that reaches him" to cut out any voices that may have given contrary advice, including diplomats and ministers, the RAND analysts argued.

Moscow's war effort has also been plagued by reports of purging of Russia's top brass, and reshuffling of the commanders in charge of operations in Ukraine. The Kremlin removed the head of Russia's aerospace forces, General Sergei Surovikin, from his position in late August.

"Crises also appear to have affected him personally, adding emotion and anger to an already insular decision-making process," the report said.

Newsweek has reached out to the Kremlin for comment via email.

Analysts have said that the Russia expected to finish off its invasion of Ukraine within a week-and-a-half, making sweeping gains in the initial days of the invasion that started on February 24, 2022. But this failed to materialize in the face of what experts have called Ukrainian defiance that took the Kremlin by surprise.

Russia made several crucial mistakes in the first phases of the war, Western analysts have long said, including how it deployed its tank crews, sustaining heavy losses of experienced personnel.

Now heading towards the second winter of all-out war, the conflict has become one of attrition, with both Russia and Ukraine sustaining heavy casualties during the months since Kyiv launched its counteroffensive in early June.

Ukraine's military said on Thursday morning that it has repelled Russian attacks around several villages close to the decimated Donetsk city of Bakhmut, including the settlements of Klishchiivka and Andriivka, which Ukraine said it had retaken in recent weeks.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Thursday that its southern grouping of forces had lost two tanks, several armored vehicles and around 30 fighters around Klishchiivka. Newsweek has not been able to verify these figures.

Heavy fighting has also continued along the southern front lines, in the annexed Zaporizhzhia region. There, Ukraine is hoping to advance further around the town of Verbove after breaking through well-prepared Russian defenses around nearby Robotyne earlier this month.

Although many of the decisions may have been out of the hands of Russia's General Staff, the Kremlin leader has been "more hesitant to escalate, particularly against NATO, than was generally assumed before the war," the RAND report said.

A wariness of escalating the conflict has plagued Ukraine's Western backers in conversations around military aid that Kyiv has requested. Analysts have also said the Kremlin leader is unpredictable, throwing another level of uncertainty into the mix.

But Western countries supporting Ukraine "underestimated Russia's fear of NATO and accompanying hesitance to confront NATO directly," RAND said.