Judging by the information leaked from the secret Pentagon documents, the Russian military headquarters has been unable to reach even a semblance of agreement for months. On 27 pages of newly published classified information, for which the competent services of the USA tried to find the source by all available means, and it seems that they finally succeeded, the dynamics of the cooperation of key people in the organizational structure of the Russian army are vividly shown, and how much discord reigns between them the fact that he is the president also speaks for itself Vladimir Putin had to intervene several times.
The documents state that one of the biggest problems is the fact that the competent authorities cannot even reach a tentative consensus on the number of Russian victims in the “special military operation”. While the FSB secret service estimates that more than 110,000 Russian soldiers died in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense claims that it is 5,937 of them; no less no more. In this context, the FSB accuses the competent department that when counting the victims, they did not include the dead and wounded from the Russian National Guard, or even the mercenaries of the Wagner group, as well as the forces provided by Chechnya for Putin’s operation in Ukraine. Ramzan Kadyrov. The newly published secret document states that by February 2023, between 189,500 and 223,000 Russian soldiers had perished in Ukraine, of which, according to estimates, 43,000 died, while on the Ukrainian side, between 124,500 and 131,000 soldiers ended up “out of commission”, of which 17,500 died.
What remains as a fact from the Pentagon documents is that there is a high level of mistrust among the key bodies of the Russian war headquarters, but also that the energy they invest in accusing each other of “deliberate manipulation of data” is probably one of the leading reasons why on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine for months they did not achieve consistent results.
Secret documents also show the background of the conflict Yevgenija Prigožinaa business mogul at the head of the Wagner mercenary army that plays a key role in the Battle of Bahmut, with the Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu. That there was a spark between them became clear to the whole world after Prigozhin did not choose his words, publicly attacking the Russian headquarters for the too slow delivery of weapons to the battlefield, and tried to put pressure on the Kremlin to start arming the forces on the ground at a higher speed.
“There is no rational obstacle. Ammunition is sitting in warehouses all over Russia while my people are dying in the field just because some apparatchik is sabotaging the supply chain,” reads the document as an alleged statement by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The documents also reveal the fact that Valerij Gerasimov, the head of the Russian military staff, ordered the suspension of the procurement of ammunition for the Wagner paramilitary unit as early as February 12, when the mercenaries were suffering huge losses in Bahmut. In these circumstances, Prigozhin allegedly began to attribute all the war successes on the ground to himself, which did not please the Russian government, which wanted to keep some factor of cohesion in the crumbling military structure in the midst of a “military operation”. In the first phase of Prigozhin’s strategy, the Kremlin did not do much to silence him, but after his statements began to spread unstoppably on Russian social networks, Putin decided to intervene and invite Shoigu and Prigozhin to resolve their disagreements “in the privacy of four walls”. He allegedly confirmed the meeting himself in published secret documents Vladislav Andrijevskione of the leaders of the Wagner group.
One of the documents, dated February 23, points out that “Russia failed to intercept a huge shipment of ammunition arriving in Ukraine from the West, which is why it is not overly likely that the Russian army will be able to achieve any significant victories on the ground in the foreseeable future.”
“Russia, due to the economic consequences it is suffering as a result of the imposed sanctions, but also due to the reduced ability of conventional conflict, could continue to record large losses on the ground during the next six months,” reads one of the documents.
The six pages of the published document called “The Watch Report” attracted a lot of attention, on which they presented a small amount of newly collected information, usually without any major context, among which was the announcement of the Chinese shipment of military equipment to Russia.
