A person from the inner circle of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin directly disagreed with him about the failures experienced by the Russian army in Ukrainewrites The Washington Post, citing Ukrainian intelligence sources.

The newspaper claims that US intelligence agencies at one of their regular briefings told the US President Joe Budden about the details of the differences and about who disagreed with Putin, without mentioning his name.

According to the publication, the said person conveyed to the President of Russia the reservations that exist regarding the organization of the operation, ineffective command and mistakes made by military leaders. In particular, US intelligence sources believe that people in Putin’s entourage are dissatisfied with the losses that Russia bears and with those major mistakes in the work of the Ministry of Defense that the war revealed.

According to the publication, incidents involving people from Putin’s “close circle”, who had previously directly disagreed with him, were not announced. The new intelligence information, combined with recent statements by Russian officials, suggests there are divisions at the highest echelons of power, the newspaper writes, apparently in light of public criticism of the Defense Ministry by people considered close to Putin, such as (Chechen leader) Ramzhan Kadyrov and (founder of the paramilitary Wagner organization) Evgeny Prigozhin.

Peskov: They are not true

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the information of the American intelligence services about a man from Putin’s inner circle, in which he “directly provoked Putin”, is “absolutely untrue.” However, he acknowledged the existence of “labor differences” in the Russian leadership, saying that such differences are not a sign of a split.

Over the past few weeks, Ukrainian forces have carried out two successful offensive operations in the Kharkiv region (then the offensive continued in the North Donetsk and Lugansk regions), as well as in Kherson. Almost immediately after the first attack, Putin announced the so-called “partial mobilization” in Russia, and the Russian authorities formally completed the annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territories in a short time.

Source: APE-MPE, Svoboda.org, The Washington Post.