On February 24 last year, Vladimir Putin expected Ukraine to fall quickly. The Russian dictator hoped for a lightning invasion with little bloodshed, the goal of which was to capture Kyiv and overthrow the government in a few days.
Instead, Ukraine and Russia are now embroiled in a grueling war that has resulted in thousands of deaths and shows no sign of ending soon.
Source. This is according to the Financial Times, which spoke to Putin's inner circle.
While the enormous cost of the invasion is now clear to Putin, those around him say he remains determined to see it through.
The Financial Times spoke to longtime advisers to Putin as well as people who have taken part in the fighting, and it seems that few members of the elite are interested in prolonging the conflict.
"The idea was never to have hundreds of thousands of people die. It went wrong," said a former senior official.
However, they said, Putin continues to justify the reasons for his invasion.
"He says: "It turns out we were not ready at all. The army is a mess. Our industry is a mess. But it's good that we found out about it this way, and not when NATO attacked us."
Others point out that the Russian president is more isolated from truthful information than ever, so he receives bad advice from others.
"Stalin was a villain, but a good manager, because he could not be lied to. But now no one can tell Putin the truth," said another source.
"People who do not trust anyone begin to trust a very small number of people who lie to them," the source added.
The propaganda surrounding the war and Putin's demands for loyalty have led to his advisors increasingly telling him what he wants to hear.
"He is in his right mind. He is sane. He is not crazy. But no one can be an expert in everything. And his advisors are lying to him," said the former Putin confidant.
Background. As a reminder, during his speech in Poland, US President Joe Biden said that "Putin cannot be pacified, he can only be defeated."