The U.S. has intelligence suggesting Russian Russian President Vladimir Putin military officials was mislead over the preparation and the conduct of the war in Ukraine citing advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, according to White House.
“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing, and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth,” Bedingfield told reporters, without providing details on the evidence behind the assessment.
Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ — the branch of British intelligence dealing with intercepts and cybersecurity in a speech in Australia also said, Putin “massively misjudged” the resistance of the Ukrainian people.
“We’ve seen Russian soldiers — short of weapons and morale — refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft,” he said, adding even though Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, “the extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.”
Meanwhile, Russia said it’s regrouping forces in Ukraine in a push to complete the takeover of the eastern Donbas region, after announcing it would scale back operations around Kyiv.
President Joe Biden promised another $500 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine during a call with his counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Commodity Talk:
The Biden Administration is weighing a plan to release roughly a million barrel of oil a day from strategic reserves for the upcoming months in an attempt to combat rising gasoline prices amid supply shortages after sanctioning Russian oil, according to Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter.
The move is accompanied by a diplomatic push for the International Energy Agency to coordinate a global release by other countries. A final decision hasn’t been reached on the global release, but the White House may make an announcement on the U.S. release as soon as Thursday, one of the people said according to Bloomberg.
The U.S. also warned India not to ramp up oil purchase from Russia, saying it had no objection to its purchases given they are bought a discount and are not in significantly higher volumes than previous years, Reuters reported citing an unidentified senior administration official.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she was disappointed at news that India is considering a Russian proposal to facilitate bilateral payments outside of the SWIFT system.
After German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Putin on Wednesday German government spokesman said that Putin told Scholz that “the payments for Russian gas would continue to be made exclusively in euros” to Russia’s Gazprom bank and would then be converted into rubles. Scholz asked for “written information in order to understand the procedure more precisely.” The Kremlin said only that Scholz and Putin agreed that their experts would discuss the issue.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi also spoke with Putin Wednesday on the issue, as French President Emmanuel Macron did a day earlier. The countries are among the European Union’s largest consumers of Russian gas, and the calls may signal a sense of alarm in Europe about a potential cut-off. Energy ministers from the Group of Seven nations this week rejected the demand to pay in rubles, which officials say violates contract terms.
Meanwhile, the European Union also weighing a new set of measure to tighten on its existing sanctions against Russia as early as next week.
More sanctions to follow:
The Biden administration also weighing newer sanctions on Russia, the White House said hours after a phone call between Biden and Zelenskiy.
“We are continuing to look at options to expand and deepen our sanctions and I anticipate that we would probably have more for you on that in the coming days,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield told reporters.
