US intel paints Putin as aggrieved, angry over Ukraine war
WASHINGTON, United States — US intelligence chiefs on Tuesday branded Russia's Vladimir Putin an "angry," isolated leader craving global clout, frustrated about how his Ukraine invasion has not gone to plan, and lobbing provocative nuclear threats at the West.
The long-standing president in Moscow has been "stewing in a combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years," CIA Director William Burns told US lawmakers.
He called the invasion of Ukraine a matter of "deep personal conviction" for Putin, his latest defiant clash with Europe and the United States.
"I think Putin is angry and frustrated right now. He's likely to double down and try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties," Burns said at a congressional hearing on global threats.
The Russian strongman has encountered a tidal wave of opprobrium for the deadly invasion, leaving him isolated like never before.
The US intelligence community warned of the potential for Putin to lash out, especially noting an elevated nuclear threat.
Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, said Russia under Putin has been working overtime to modernize its weaponry, particularly smaller-yield nuclear weapons.
Putin has "invested in tactical nuclear weapons," Berrier said. "I believe that he thinks that gives him an asymmetric advantage."
Putin took the shock step last month of putting Russia's nuclear forces on high alert.
Some US officials have privately expressed concern that, in a worst-case scenario, he might order deployment of such mini-nukes on a city.
'Obsessed' and paranoid
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said "Putin's nuclear saber-rattling" has put the West on notice.
"We assess Putin feels aggrieved the West does not give him proper deference, and perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose," Haines told the panel.
"But what he might be willing to accept as a victory may change over time," she said.
The invasion has produced "a shock to the geopolitical order with implications for the future that we are only beginning to understand, but are sure to be consequential."
With Putin under immense pressure, his circle of close advisors is getting "narrower and narrower," the CIA's Burns said.
In such a system, "it's not proven career enhancing for people to question or challenge his judgment."
A top US diplomat also weighed in before Congress to label Russia's president an "obsessed," paranoid leader who has created a "bed of lies" and tested the very foundations of international law.
"Over the years, President Putin's imperial ambition has grown and he is dissatisfied with the last 30 years of Russian history," Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told Congress in a separate hearing.
He has longed "to be the guy that helps recreate the Soviet Union," she said of Putin, a KGB officer at the time of the USSR's disintegration, which he saw as a personal defeat.
With his intentions laid bare by the war, and his recent comments suggesting Ukraine is not a legitimate nation independent from Russia, "I think his interior mind is now out there for everybody to see," Nuland added.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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