Russian President Vladimir Putin's advisers are shielding him from how badly the invasion of Ukraine is going, top U.S. officials said Wednesday as the conflict raged on despite peace talks and as the number of Ukrainians who have fled their country topped 4 million.
Putin's advisers may be afraid to deliver bad news to a leader who has been willing to take increasingly extreme measures against people who dissent within the Russian system, U.S. intelligence officials said. One worrisome consequence, Pentagon officials said, was that negotiations underway between Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly five-week-old invasion could be undermined by misinformed expectations and directives from the Russian side.