The infighting within the Russian government appears to be wider and deeper than previously thought. The FSB and the ministry led by Sergei Shoigu are at loggerheads over the number of dead and wounded on the Ukrainian front, and Russian domestic intelligence accuses the military of concealing the scale of Russian losses, a new package of documents released by The New York Times (NYT) is among classified materials leaked from the Pentagon .

The new set of documents, which contains 27 pages, supports the idea that American spy services have penetrated deeply into the Russian intelligence apparatus and military command structure. It also shows that the security breach at the Pentagon may be wider than previously thought, The New York Times notes, News.ro reports.

Taken together, the documents highlight some of the main reasons why, according to many analysts, Vladimir Putin has failed to achieve a military victory in Ukraine after more than 13 months of war. Among them: internal rivalries and mutual recriminations between Russian agencies responsible for various aspects of the war, including the FSB and the Ministry of Defense.

The FSB accuses Shoigu of hiding the dead

Thus, in one of the documents, American intelligence reports that the main internal intelligence of Russia, the Federal Security Service (FSB), accused the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation of “hiding victims from Ukraine.” According to U.S. intelligence analysts, the revelation underscores “the continued reluctance of military officials to pass bad news higher up the chain of command.”

The February 28 memo appears to be based on electronic intercepts collected by US intelligence agencies. The documents appear to contain little or no information from human sources. The document shows that the FSB questions the number of victims released by the Ministry of Defense during discussions at the level of the Russian leadership.

The FSB employees, the document says, claim that there are no dead or wounded Russian National Guardsmen, mercenaries of the “Wagner” PMC, and fighters brought by the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense.

The FSB estimated that the actual number of Russians wounded and killed in the battle was closer to 110,000,” the document said, which did not specify the difference with the balance provided by the Ministry of Defense. The ministry last publicly released a death toll in September, when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the war began, the NYT reported, citing News.ro.

Earlier, American officials estimated the Russian losses at about 200,000 soldiers. Another leaked Pentagon document reports that Russian casualties for February were somewhere between 189,500 and 223,000, including up to 43,000 killed in action, compared to 124,500-131,000 Ukrainian casualties, of which up to 17,500 died in battles.

Putin allegedly mediated the dispute between Shoigu and Prigozhin

The new documents also provide new details of the dispute, which became highly publicized in February when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch who runs Wagner’s private mercenary group, accused the Russian military of withholding ammunition that his fighters from Bakhmut urgently needed.

Vladimir Putin personally tried to resolve the dispute by summoning Prigozhin and Shoigu to a meeting that probably took place on February 22, the document shows.

“The meeting was almost certainly related, at least in part, to the public accusations made by Prigozhin and tensions with Shoigu,” the document says.

The material provided by The New York Times was posted on one of the Discord servers where the first set of confidential Pentagon documents appeared.

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