Putin botched the Ukraine war because he lives in an echo chamber and overestimated his abilities, analysts and intel officials say

• Analysts think poor assumptions led Vladimir Putin to err in Ukraine, The Washington Post reported.
• One European official said "an enormous amount of arrogance" led Russia to expect a quick victory.

Western officials believe that President Vladimir Putin dramatically overestimated his power and that this miscalculation is among the reasons for Russia's failures in its war in Ukraine, The Washington Post reported.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to the outlet, officials said Putin made a series of poor decisions in the first weeks of the invasion.

They appeared to be based on faulty assumptions about Ukraine, and the ease with which it would be defeated, as well as an overestimation of how effective Russian troops would be.

"He has an unwavering belief in his ability to control events," a senior NATO intelligence official said.

Another unnamed official, from a European country, told the Post that Putin seemed to have expected to seize the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, within a few days. Other officials, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have made similar claims.

This assumption of rapid victory, the official told the Post, led to military blunders. One example was the attack on an airfield near Kyiv by airborne troops.

Instead of being the first move in a lightning offensive, the troops meant to take and hold the airfield were beaten by Ukrainians.

"Just looking at how this played out, it feels there was an enormous amount of arrogance," the official said of that operation.

"You look at the insertion of the airborne forces at Hostomel airport, which was clearly designed to do a decapitation [mission] in Kyiv — and they got smashed."

After initially being repelled, Russia poured more troops into the Kyiv region with the apparent aim of encircling the capital. Though Russia overall holds numerical and technical advantages, its forces near Kyiv were stymied by Ukrainian attacks, and faulty supply lines left many advanced units short of food and ammunition.

Last week, Russia pulled its forces out of the Kyiv region as part of a refocusing of its mission toward eastern Ukraine, where the conflict is expected to intensify soon.

The assessments by analysts back up earlier claims from Western analysts and officials, who said Putin became increasingly isolated during the coronavirus pandemic and close advisors were reluctant to give him any unwelcome information.

Other officials told the Post that Putin blundered by relying on information from pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine who were ousted from power in 2014.

They, the Post's sources said, led Putin to wrongly expect widespread support within Ukraine that never came.