‘Total failure’: how Russia botched its invasion of Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been a “total failure”, according to a leaked report by Russia’s security service that compares the war to the fall of Nazi Germany.

The document, published by Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net, claims that the number of troops killed in Ukraine may already number 10,000. The Russian Ministry of Defence has so far admitted to having lost only 498 of its soldiers during the conflict.

Moscow is “acting intuitively” and “on emotion” with “the hope that suddenly something might come through for us”, the report states. “By and large, though, Russia has no way out. There are no options for a possible victory, only defeat.”

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‘Like Germany in 1944’

The report lays bare how “spies in Russia’s infamous security apparatus were kept in the dark” by Putin and his inner circle about the plans to go to war in Ukraine but are now “being blamed for the failure of the invasion”, The Times said.

The leak reveals that the FSB, the security agency that succeeded the KGB, was “given no warning” about the order for an invasion and “was unprepared to deal with the effects of crippling sanctions”, the paper said. Having then “been ordered to assess the effects of western sanctions”, the security services were “told that it was a hypothetical box-ticking exercise”, the paper added.

“You have to write the analysis in a way that makes Russia the victor… otherwise you get questioned for not doing good work,” the FSB whistleblower wrote. “Suddenly it happens and everything comes down to your completely groundless analysis.”

The FSB is hoping for “some fucking adviser to convince the leadership” that sanctions must end, they said, adding: “What if the West refuses? In that instance I won’t exclude that we will be pulled into a real international conflict, just like Hitler in 1939.”

In another part of the report, the author describes Russia’s position as “like Germany in 1943-44”. They also admit that Russia’s Ministry of Defence has no idea of the true number of Russian troops that have died as “we have lost contact with major divisions”.

Even if efforts to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are successful, they also expressed doubt that Russia would be capable of occupying Ukraine and containing any internal opposition. “Even with minimum resistance from the Ukrainians we’d need over 500,000 people, not including supply and logistics workers.”

Christo Grozev, a lead investigator on Russia’s security services at the journalism group Bellingcat, told The Times that he had shown the report to two FSB officers, both of whom said they had “no doubt it was written by a colleague”.

“Ukraine had previously leaked fake FSB letters as psy-ops,” he said. “This letter appeared different, though. It came via a reputable source and it was way longer than a forger would choose to make it.”

Nuclear fears

Amid reports that Russia’s invasion has been stalled by troops sabotaging their vehicles and by logistical failures, the letter is the latest evidence that “disquiet is growing in Russia”, The Times reported.

Lyudmila Narusova, a Russian senator, referenced the losses incurred by the Russian military, claiming on Friday that in one company of 100 conscripts only four had survived. “Yesterday the conscripts, who were forced to sign a contract or signed for them, were withdrawn from the war zone in Ukraine,” she said.

Narusova, the widow of Anatoly Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St Petersburg who died in mysterious circumstances in 2000 during Putin’s ascent to the presidency, also expressed concern about the conflict to independent Russian broadcaster Dozhd.

Dead Russian soldiers are in Ukraine “unburied, wild, stray dogs gnawing on bodies that in some cases cannot be identified because they are burnt”, she said. “I do not identify myself with those representatives of the state that speak out in favour of the war. They are following orders without thinking.”

The leaked FSB report follows an intervention by former foreign minister Andrei V Kozyrev, who claimed Russia has built a “Potemkin military” because money that was meant to modernise the armed forces was “stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus”.

“But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the president. So they reported lies to him instead”, he tweeted, adding in a long thread that Putin’s “decision to invade Ukraine” is “horrific, but not irrational”.

Kozyrev also poured doubt on the suggestion that Putin would use nuclear weapons, stating that “he is rational” and “will not intentionally use nuclear weapons against the West”. He continued: “I say intentionally because indiscriminate shelling near a nuclear power plant can cause an unintentional nuclear disaster in Ukraine.”

He concluded the thread by saying: “The West should not agree to any unilateral concessions or limit its support of Ukraine too much for the fear of nuclear war.”

Civilian targets

With increasing numbers of reports suggesting that Russia’s war effort has gone awry, fears are mounting that civilians could come under increasing levels of fire and bombardment as troops desperately try to break Ukraine’s fierce resistance.

The New York Times yesterday reported that “a Russian force advancing on Kyiv fired mortar shells” towards “a battered bridge used by evacuees fleeing the fighting, sending panicked civilians running and leaving four people dead on the pavement”.

The shells “fell first 100 or so yards from the bridge”, the paper said, “then shifted in a series of thunderous blasts into a section of street where people were fleeing”.

“A shell landed in the street, sending up a cloud of concrete dust and leaving one family – a woman, her teenage son and her daughter, who appeared to be about 8 years old; and a family friend – sprawled on the ground.”

Russian troops also “again broke ceasefire agreements by attacking humanitarian corridors in two other Ukrainian cities”, The Telegraph reported, prompting Boris Johnson to attack Putin’s war effort as “barbaric”.

“Failures to observe ceasefire agreements were blamed for hundreds of thousands of civilians being trapped inside the besieged cities of Volnovakha and Mariupol”, the paper said. A second attempt to evacuate Mariupol was abandoned yesterday.