By Sorin Andrei Dojan - Russia Team
Russian President Vladimir Putin is no stranger to US intelligence reports of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Two weeks ago, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, travelled to Moscow to deliver a bleak assessment of the Kremlin’s debacle in Ukraine to Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of Russia’s FSB, urging him to reach a deal with Kyiv before things spiral out of control, both economically and politically.
It would be naïve to assume Bortnikov knows nothing about Russia’s ailments on the battlefront. According to Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, over 240,000 Russian troops have died since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion over four years ago. These are all confirmed names, with the real figure expected to be higher.
However, if that is the reason behind Ratcliffe’s latest visit to Russia, his warning to Russian officials including Putin would unlikely prompt any changes in behaviour. That is because, for a political system built on conformity and loyalty, truth-seeking is of secondary importance to strategic goals and regime survival.
Military and intelligence preparations before 24 February 2022 illustrate how these assessments alter strategic considerations. Russian intelligence collection before the full-scale invasion had been insufficient to determine Ukraine’s strong will to fight back. One reason for failure stands out: the Kremlin’s preference for its own biases. That is because, in Russia, intelligence collection it seems to be guided by a system that incentivises delivering information aligned with the leader’s ambitions and discourages contradictory perspectives.1.
Take, for instance, its limited effort to diversify intelligence sources in Ukraine. Instead, Russian intelligence collection efforts depended, for the most part, on Russian-speaking informants, an approach described by several professors from King’s College London as “likely a methodological oversight or just plain lazy for Russian case officers who did not speak Ukrainian”.2 Or consider the series of FSB-backed polls in Ukraine, shortly before the invasion began, highlighting low trust in Ukrainian political institutions and intelligence services (27% trusted the office of the President of Ukraine, 23% trusted domestic security services) and moderate trust in the Army’s ability to repel an invasion (51%). However, most poll respondents were located in the south and east of the country, where a significant Russian minority lived3 and had historically been more distrustful of the Ukrainian government.
Russia and the Soviet Union offers several examples of leaders preferring their own assumptions. Joseph Stalin, for instance, refused to listen to intelligence analysts, preferring instead to interpret information on his own. This proved to be a critical miscalculation , since he didn’t believeAdolf Hitler would have invaded his country, despitethe vast buildup of Nazi troops near the German-Soviet border at the time4.
Today, however, the obstacle is no longer Putin’s ability to obtain accurate information. It is difficult to imagine that the Russian leadership is still unaware of how four years of war have depleted Moscow’s army and navy of men and military hardware. Instead, it is the regime’s own struggle for survival that will keep Western engagement at bay. That is because accepting peace on unfavourable terms will puncture the regime’s image-projection efforts to appear competent in the face of a much smaller neighbour and enemy. Therefore, failing to achieve even the Kremlin’s more limited goal of securing control over the Donbas could weaken Putin’s efforts to present the war as a success and potentially put more domestic pressure on the Russian leader.
If history holds any lessons for him, Nikita Khrushchev’s removal from power would be one. In 1964, after several crises, including the Cuban Missile debacle that brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict, Khrushchev was removed from power in a non-violent leadership transition.
For now, tighter domestic repression and constraints on political dissent appear to have reduced visible challenges to Putin's rule. Anti-war protests have become a scarcity in Russia. Instead of taking to the streets, there has recently been a surge in traffic across Russia’s border with Georgia, as many Russians now fear another call-up for military mobilisation. That is understandable, given that anti-war protests have led to arrests and lengthy prison sentences. The suppression of organised dissent may reduce domestic pressure on the Kremlin, although its longer-term impact on the regime remains difficult to predict.
Ratclife’s visit to Moscow should therefore not necessarily be interpreted as a sign that the war will come to an end. If anything, the problem lies not in the content of the message, but in the options it espouses: heed the advice and seek peace, or face worsening conditions on the battlefield; yet choose to make peace on unfavourable terms, and risk appearing politically weakened at home.
- Dylan, Huw, David V. Gioe, and Elena Grossfeld. “The autocrat’s intelligence paradox: Vladimir Putin’s (mis)management of Russian strategic assessment in the Ukraine War.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25, no. 3. (2023): 385–404. https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221146113.
↩︎ - Ibid. ↩︎
- Riehle, Kevin. “The Ukraine war and the shift in Russian intelligence priorities.” Intelligence & National Security 39, no. 3 (2024): 458–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2024.2322807. ↩︎
- Andrew, Cristopher and Julie Elkner. “Stalin and Foreign Intelligence.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 4, no. 1 (2003): 69-94. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14690760412331326088. ↩︎
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