How Putin’s War in Ukraine Became a Catastrophe for Russia

Russian troopers go into battle with little meals, few bullets and directions grabbed from Wikipedia for weapons they barely know use.

They plod by way of Ukraine with previous maps like this one from the Nineteen Sixties, recovered from the battlefield, or no maps in any respect.

They communicate on open cellphone traces, revealing their positions and exposing the incompetence and disarray of their ranks.

They have skilled at dilapidated Russian bases hollowed out by corruption, together with this one, residence to a tank division badly defeated in Ukraine.

They are given wildly unrealistic timetables and objectives for taking Ukrainian territory and complain of being despatched right into a “meat grinder.”

This is the within story of historic Russian failures.

Putin’s War

A Times investigation based mostly on interviews, intercepts, paperwork and secret battle plans reveals how a “walk in the park” turned a disaster for Russia.

Putin’s War

A Times investigation based mostly on interviews, intercepts, paperwork and secret battle plans reveals how a “walk in the park” turned a disaster for Russia.

By Michael Schwirtz, Anton Troianovski, Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Adam Entous and Thomas Gibbons-Neff

They by no means had an opportunity.

Fumbling blindly by way of cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s a hundred and fifty fifth Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they mentioned. Just a number of weeks earlier, they’d been manufacturing facility staff and truck drivers, watching an countless showcase of supposed Russian navy victories at residence on state tv earlier than being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had by no means had any medical coaching.

Now, they have been piled onto the tops of overcrowded armored autos, lumbering by way of fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century in the past and just about nothing to eat, they mentioned. Russia had been at battle many of the yr, but its military appeared much less ready than ever. In interviews, members of the brigade mentioned a few of them had barely fired a gun earlier than and described having nearly no bullets anyway, not to mention air cowl or artillery. But it didn’t frighten them an excessive amount of, they mentioned. They would by no means see fight, their commanders had promised.

Only when the shells started crashing round them, ripping their comrades to items, did they understand how badly they’d been duped.

Flung to the bottom, a drafted Russian soldier named Mikhail recalled opening his eyes to a shock: the shredded our bodies of his comrades littering the sphere. Shrapnel had sliced open his stomach, too. Desperate to flee, he mentioned, he crawled to a thicket of bushes and tried to dig a ditch together with his arms.

Of the 60 members of his platoon close to the japanese Ukrainian city of Pavlivka that day in late October, about 40 have been killed, mentioned Mikhail, talking by cellphone from a navy hospital outdoors Moscow. Only eight, he mentioned, escaped severe damage.

“This isn’t war,” Mikhail mentioned, struggling to talk by way of heavy, liquid breaths. “It’s the destruction of the Russian people by their own commanders.”

President Vladimir V. Putin’s battle was by no means speculated to be like this. When the pinnacle of the C.I.A. traveled to Moscow final yr to warn in opposition to invading Ukraine, he discovered a supremely assured Kremlin, with Mr. Putin’s nationwide safety adviser boasting that Russia’s cutting-edge armed forces have been sturdy sufficient to face up even to the Americans.

Russian invasion plans, obtained by The New York Times, present that the navy anticipated to dash a whole bunch of miles throughout Ukraine and triumph inside days. Officers have been advised to pack their costume uniforms and medals in anticipation of navy parades within the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

But as a substitute of that resounding victory, with tens of hundreds of his troops killed and elements of his military in shambles after practically 10 months of battle, Mr. Putin faces one thing else fully: his nation’s biggest human and strategic calamity because the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A useless Russian soldier in Kharkiv the day after the battle began in February.

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

How may one of many world’s strongest militaries, led by a celebrated tactician like Mr. Putin, have faltered so badly in opposition to its a lot smaller, weaker rival? To piece collectively the reply, we drew from a whole bunch of Russian authorities emails, paperwork, invasion plans, navy ledgers and propaganda directives. We listened to Russian cellphone calls from the battlefield and spoke with dozens of troopers, senior officers and Putin confidants who’ve identified him for many years.

A Russian logbook detailing the motion of airborne troops from Belarus towards Kyiv, together with assaults and “nonstop fire” by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s navy intelligence service, referred to as the G.U.R.

The Times investigation discovered a shocking cascade of errors that began with Mr. Putin — profoundly remoted within the pandemic, obsessed together with his legacy, satisfied of his personal brilliance — and continued lengthy after drafted troopers like Mikhail have been despatched to the slaughter.

At each flip, the failures ran deeper than beforehand identified:

In interviews, Putin associates mentioned he spiraled into self-aggrandizement and anti-Western zeal, main him to make the fateful determination to invade Ukraine in close to complete isolation, with out consulting consultants who noticed the battle as pure folly. Aides and hangers-on fueled his many grudges and suspicions, a suggestions loop that one former confidant likened to the radicalizing impact of a social-media algorithm. Even a few of the president’s closest advisers have been left at midnight till the tanks started to maneuver. As one other longtime confidant put it, “Putin decided that his own thinking would be enough.”

The Russian navy, regardless of Western assumptions about its prowess, was severely compromised, gutted by years of theft. Hundreds of billions of {dollars} had been dedicated to modernizing the armed forces below Mr. Putin, however corruption scandals ensnared hundreds of officers. One navy contractor described frantically hanging monumental patriotic banners to cover the decrepit circumstances at a serious Russian tank base, hoping to idiot a delegation of prime brass. The guests have been even prevented from going inside to make use of the toilet, he mentioned, lest they uncover the ruse.

Once the invasion started, Russia squandered its dominance over Ukraine by way of a parade of blunders. It relied on previous maps and dangerous intelligence to fireplace its missiles, leaving Ukrainian air defenses surprisingly intact, able to defend the nation. Russia’s vaunted hacking squads tried, and failed, to win in what some officers name the primary massive take a look at of cyberweapons in precise warfare. Russian troopers, many shocked they have been going to battle, used their cellphones to name residence, permitting the Ukrainians to trace them and choose them off in massive numbers. And Russia’s armed forces have been so stodgy and sclerotic that they didn’t adapt, even after enduring large losses on the battlefield. While their planes have been being shot down, many Russian pilots flew as in the event that they confronted no hazard, nearly like they have been at an air present.

Stretched skinny by its grand ambitions, Russia seized extra territory than it may defend, leaving hundreds of sq. miles within the arms of skeleton crews of underfed, undertrained and poorly geared up fighters. Many have been conscripts or ragtag separatists from Ukraine’s divided east, with gear from the Forties or little greater than printouts from the web describing use a sniper rifle, suggesting troopers discovered combat on the fly. With new weapons from the West in hand, the Ukrainians beat them again, but Russian commanders saved sending waves of floor troops into pointless assaults, repeatedly. “Nobody is going to stay alive,” one Russian soldier mentioned he realized after being ordered right into a fifth march straight within the sights of Ukrainian artillery. Finally, he and his demoralized comrades refused to go.

A Soviet-era map of modern-day Ukraine, Belarus and Russia recovered from the battlefield.

Mr. Putin divided his battle into fiefs, leaving nobody highly effective sufficient to problem him. Many of his fighters are commanded by people who find themselves not even a part of the navy, like his former bodyguard, the chief of Chechnya and a mercenary boss who has supplied catering for Kremlin occasions. As the preliminary invasion failed, the atomized method solely deepened, chipping away at an already disjointed battle effort. Now, Mr. Putin’s fractured armies usually operate like rivals, competing for weapons and, at occasions, viciously turning on each other. One soldier recounted how the clashes turned violent, with a Russian tank commander intentionally charging at his supposed allies and blowing up their checkpoint.

Since the early days of the invasion, Mr. Putin has conceded, privately, that the battle has not gone as deliberate.

During a gathering in March with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, Mr. Putin admitted that the Ukrainians have been more durable “than I was told,” in accordance with two individuals conversant in the trade. “This will probably be much more difficult than we thought. But the war is on their territory, not ours. We are a big country and we have patience.”

People who know Mr. Putin say he is able to sacrifice untold lives and treasure for so long as it takes, and in a uncommon face-to-face assembly with the Americans final month the Russians needed to ship a stark message to President Biden: No matter what number of Russian troopers are killed or wounded on the battlefield, Russia won’t hand over.

One NATO member is warning allies that Mr. Putin is able to settle for the deaths or accidents of as many as 300,000 Russian troops — roughly thrice his estimated losses to this point.

Just days after going through blowback concerning the battle from usually pleasant leaders in September, Mr. Putin doubled down on the invasion, calling up a whole bunch of hundreds of Russians in a draft that was supposed to show the battle in Russia’s favor, however has as a substitute stirred rising anger at residence. Soon after, a whole bunch of Russian troopers have been killed outdoors Pavlivka, together with Mikhail’s drafted comrades within the blind advance of the a hundred and fifty fifth.

“Legs, guts. I mean, meat. Just meat,” one other member of the platoon, Aleksandr, mentioned from a hospital in Russia. “I know it sounds terrible, but you can’t describe it any other way. People were turned into hamburger.”

Aleksandr recounted how he and his fellow draftees had requested their teacher in Russia what they may probably study firing a gun and changing into troopers within the few weeks earlier than being despatched to Ukraine.

“He was honest: ‘Nothing,’” Aleksandr mentioned the trainer responded.

Reporting was contributed by Aaron Krolik, Adam Satariano, Alan Yuhas, Andrew Higgins, Carlotta Gall, Christiaan Triebert, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, Ivan Nechepurenko, Julian Barnes, Mykola Ponomarenko, Natalia Yermak, Oleg Matsnev, Paul Mozur, Ronen Bergman, Stanislav Kozliuk and Valerie Hopkins. Aleksandra Koroleva, Oksana Nesterenko and Milana Mazaeva contributed translations.

Produced by Gray Beltran, Rumsey Taylor, Adam Dean, Mona Boshnaq, Gaia Tripoli and James Surdam. Maps by Scott Reinhard.

The extra setbacks Mr. Putin endures on the battlefield, the extra fears develop over how far he’s prepared to go. He has killed tens of hundreds in Ukraine, leveled cities and focused civilians for optimum ache — obliterating hospitals, colleges and house buildings, whereas reducing off energy and water to tens of millions earlier than winter. Each time Ukrainian forces rating a serious blow in opposition to Russia, the bombing of their nation intensifies. And Mr. Putin has repeatedly reminded the world that he can use something at his disposal, together with nuclear arms, to pursue his notion of victory.

Emergency companies on the web site of a Russian missile strike on a residential constructing in Zaporizhzhia, in October.

Nicole Tung for The New York Times

As far again as January, with the United States warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was imminent, a retired Russian basic named Leonid Ivashov noticed catastrophe on the horizon. In a uncommon open letter, he warned that utilizing pressure in opposition to Ukraine would threaten “the very existence of Russia as a state.”

In a latest cellphone interview, General Ivashov mentioned that his warnings earlier than the battle echoed what he had been listening to from nervous Russian navy officers on the time. Though the Kremlin insisted an invasion was not on the desk, some may inform in any other case. Service members advised him that “victory in such a situation is impossible,” he mentioned, however their superiors advised them to not fear. A battle can be a “walk in the park,” they have been advised.

The final 10 months, he went on, have turned out to be “even more tragic” than predicted. Nimble Ukrainian generals and troopers have outmaneuvered a a lot larger, extra deadly foe. The West, cheered by Ukraine’s successes, has supplied ever extra highly effective weapons to drive the Russians again.

“Never in its history has Russia made such stupid decisions,” General Ivashov mentioned. “Alas, today stupidity has triumphed — stupidity, greed, a kind of vengefulness and even a kind of malice.”

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, blames the West, and the weapons it has given Ukraine, for Russia’s surprising difficulties within the battle.

“This is a big burden for us,” Mr. Peskov mentioned, depicting Russia as taking over all of NATO’s navy would possibly in Ukraine. “It was just very hard to believe in such cynicism and in such bloodthirstiness on the part of the collective West.”

Some of the battle’s authentic supporters are beginning to reckon with the thought of defeat. Before the invasion, American intelligence companies recognized Oleg Tsaryov as a puppet chief the Kremlin may set up as soon as it took over Ukraine. His religion within the battle has since slipped away.

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

“I was there. I participated” within the invasion, Mr. Tsaryov advised The Times throughout a cellphone interview. But, he mentioned, he was by no means advised the ultimate particulars and “the Russian Army didn’t understand” the Ukrainians would combat again, pondering “everything would be easy.”

Now, Mr. Tsaryov, a businessman from Ukraine, says he will likely be comfortable if the preventing merely ends alongside the present battle traces — with Russia having didn’t seize and hold maintain of a single regional capital because the invasion started.

“We’re losing Ukraine,” Mr. Tsaryov mentioned. “We’ve already lost it.”

Blunders
“Tomorrow you are going to Ukraine.”

Russian invasion plans obtained by The Times ordered troops to dash a whole bunch of miles throughout Ukraine from a number of instructions, anticipating little resistance.

Blunders
“Tomorrow you are going to Ukraine.”

Russian invasion plans obtained by The Times ordered troops to dash a whole bunch of miles throughout Ukraine from a number of instructions, anticipating little resistance.

The assault got here by land, sea and air.

As missiles struck the southern metropolis of Mykolaiv earlier than daybreak, a Ukrainian pilot, Oleksii, woke as much as a cellphone name: Get to the runway, a fellow pilot advised him.

Oleksii bolted throughout the tarmac at midnight as the primary Russian missiles landed, clambered into his Su-27 fighter jet and took off simply as buildings throughout the airfield started to blow up.

“At that moment, I understood that it was really something bad,” mentioned Oleksii, 26, given that solely his first title and rank, captain, be used. Some different troopers and officers on this article weren’t approved to talk publicly, or confronted reprisals.

Just earlier than 6 a.m. Moscow time, Mr. Putin declared the opening of his “special military operation” in a televised deal with. It started with an aerial bombardment to take out Ukraine’s air defenses, communications and radar installations — to overwhelm its navy and shatter its potential to combat again.

More than 150 missiles thundered into Ukraine from bombers, submarines and ships. As many as 75 Russian plane streaked into Ukrainian skies, concerning the measurement of Ukraine’s total working air fight fleet, analysts and officers mentioned.

On his radar display, Oleksii noticed the blips of incoming missiles and enemy plane earlier than getting his orders: Fly to a backup air base in central Ukraine. When he landed, he was astonished. Not solely was his unit there, however portion of Ukraine’s remaining air pressure as properly.

For days, he and his fellow pilots flew missions from their new base, questioning when Russian radar operators would lastly discover them. A strike on their place may have been disastrous, gutting the Ukrainian protection, and the pilots assumed it was solely a matter of time till one got here. But it took 4 days for the Russians to assault, and many of the plane had moved to new areas by then, leaving Oleksii in amazement.

“It was really simple,” he mentioned. “I don’t know how they missed this opportunity.”

The failure to destroy Ukraine’s modest air defenses was one of the crucial important blunders of the battle, foiling Russia’s mighty air pressure early on. Interviews revealed why that occurred — and the way the Ukrainians managed to remain a step forward of their invaders.

Russia invades

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Ukraine ought to have been overwhelmed. By one rely, its fighter jets have been outnumbered 15 to 1 in some early air battles. Russia’s planes have been additionally extra superior, serving to its pilots see farther and strike from larger distances. Russia had hundreds of cruise and ballistic missiles that ought to have smothered Ukraine’s ageing, Soviet-era defenses. That is what American and Ukrainian intelligence officers assumed, anyway, resulting in predictions that Ukraine would fall inside days.

So, Ukraine shuffled the deck. It moved a few of its defenses — like Buk and S-300 missile launchers, together with its major radio intelligence command and management heart — to new websites earlier than the battle started, senior Ukrainian officers mentioned. Russian missiles usually hit the previous areas as a substitute. In all, as many as 60 p.c of Russian cruise missiles missed their supposed targets, American officers mentioned.

Part of Russia’s downside was agility. Even if Russian forces had noticed Oleksii and his fellow pilots bunched collectively at their new rendezvous level, American officers mentioned, Russia’s navy was so inflexible and centralized that it sometimes wanted 48 to 72 hours to replace its intelligence and get approval to go after new targets — by which era the Ukrainians have been gone.

That similar inflexibility made the Russians straightforward to hit. After failing to take out Ukraine’s defenses, many Russian pilots saved flying as if they’d. Their ground-attack planes usually flew sorties with out backup from different fighter jets, the Ukrainians mentioned, enabling outgunned pilots like Oleksii to catch them off-guard by flying at low altitudes, hidden from radar, and roaring up from under to shoot them down.

The particles of a Russian Su-34 plane that crashed right into a residential neighborhood in Chernihiv in March.

David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

“Maybe the Russian Army didn’t read the Soviet books,” Oleksii mentioned. “They flew straight without any cover. They had bombs, they had rockets, but they didn’t cover their attack aircraft.”

Then in March, when Russian pilots lastly modified ways and began flying low sufficient to duck below Ukrainian air protection radar, they fell into the sights of Ukrainian missiles, together with shoulder-fired Stingers supplied by the United States.

For Russian troops on the bottom, it was a catastrophe.

Without air cowl, they have been immediately much more weak, throwing their troubled march towards Kyiv and different massive cities additional into disarray.

Though tens of hundreds of them had amassed alongside Ukraine’s borders, hovering menacingly as if desperate to strike, many by no means thought they have been really going to battle. Like most of Russia, they figured it was only for present, to extract concessions from the West.

Interviews with Russian troopers present how shocked they have been when the orders got here to invade. Cpl. Nikita Chibrin, a 27-year-old soldier in a motorized infantry brigade, mentioned he had spent the month earlier than in Belarus on what he and his fellow troopers have been advised was a coaching train. On Feb. 23, he mentioned, he and his unit have been at their camp celebrating the Defender of the Fatherland vacation, snacking on sweet they’d been given for the event, when their commander approached.

“Tomorrow you are going to Ukraine to fuck up some shit,” he mentioned the commander advised them. There was no additional rationalization.

Before daybreak on the twenty fourth, Corporal Chibrin and his comrades loaded right into a tracked armored personnel provider. They had no directions and no concept the place they have been headed, he mentioned.

Another Russian soldier stationed in Belarus mentioned he discovered he was going to battle solely an hour earlier than his unit started to march. The order was each easy and wildly optimistic: Follow the automobile in entrance of you and attain Kyiv inside 18 hours.

According to the unit’s schedule and logbook — which have been obtained by The Times and reviewed by three unbiased navy analysts, who thought-about them genuine — the primary autos in his convoy have been speculated to punch down from Belarus and arrive on the outskirts of Kyiv by 2:55 p.m., even sooner than the soldier was advised.

A Russian navy timetable exhibiting an in depth schedule of motion for airborne troops set to depart Belarus, and arrive on Kyiv’s outskirts.

Source: Ukraine’s navy intelligence service, referred to as the G.U.R.

He didn’t come shut. The huge autos have been so heavy, ripping up the roads as they tried to maneuver ahead, that the convoy bought slowed down instantly, the soldier mentioned. It took greater than a day simply to cross the border into Ukraine.

It bought worse from there. The logbook recorded day after day of delays, Ukrainian assaults and a whole bunch of accidents, deaths and destroyed autos.

Secret orders for a special Russian pressure — obtained by The Times and shared with 4 unbiased navy analysts, all of whom mentioned they have been credible — have been issued solely hours earlier than Mr. Putin’s announcement.

The orders, for a unit of the twenty sixth Tank Regiment, have been oddly overconfident, to the purpose of being contradictory. They anticipated a tangle of attainable resistance from Ukrainian troops and planes, but they nonetheless laid out a largely uninhibited, 24-hour sprint from Ukraine’s border with Russia to some extent throughout the Dnipro River, about 250 miles away.

There, the unit would dig in, about two hours outdoors Kyiv, and block Ukrainian troops sweeping in from the south and east, the Russian battle plans mentioned. And irrespective of how fierce the enemy was, the unit was anticipated to finish the mission by itself.

A doc recovered from the twenty sixth tank regiment detailing invasion plans issued on Feb. 23, 2022.

“There are no forces or equipment for reinforcements,” the orders mentioned.

Sure sufficient, the lumbering, largely unprotected Russian columns proved engaging targets.

On March 17, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander of Ukrainian forces, posted a video of burning tanks that he mentioned belonged to the twenty sixth Tank Regiment in northeastern Ukraine — a whole bunch of kilometers wanting its supposed vacation spot.

The unit misplaced 16 autos in lower than three weeks, in accordance with Russian paperwork seized and revealed by Ukraine. The mom of 1 younger tank soldier on the unit’s roster advised Russian media that her son was introduced residence in items, recognized solely by his DNA.

Across Ukraine, the Russian losses mounted. An enormous armored column of greater than 30,000 troops on the core of Russia’s pressure pushing south towards the town of Chernihiv was eviscerated by a motley group of Ukrainian defenders outnumbered 5 to 1, troopers and senior officers mentioned. The Ukrainians hid within the forest and picked aside the Russian column with shoulder-fired antitank weapons, like American-made Javelins.

A Ukrainian soldier carrying an NLAW anti-tank guided missile as he walks towards a destroyed Russian armored column at a junction close to Ivankiv, northwest of Kyiv, filmed between Feb. 24-26.

Lyubov Shelkovich, by way of Facebook

One Russian soldier within the unit mentioned he was shocked by the swiftness of the Ukrainian assault.

“In the first battle, the column was ambushed, and I was wounded, and that’s it,” he mentioned. “For 24 hours, I was missing a leg, lying in a field waiting for my unit to come get me.”

The rout close to Chernihiv spoiled a part of Russia’s plan to envelop Kyiv.

Ukrainian troopers strolling alongside a road the place a column of Russian navy autos was destroyed close to Chernihiv in April.

Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

A bloodbath on the Antonov Airport spoiled one other.

Russian forces had counted on the ingredient of shock when wave upon wave of helicopters descended on the airport, residence to the most important plane on this planet: the An-225 Mriya, a cargo aircraft with a 290-foot wingspan that was an object of Ukrainian nationwide satisfaction.

Taking the airport would give Russian forces a beachhead to ferry in troops for the assault on Ukraine’s capital. But the Ukrainians anticipated as a lot. Using shoulder-fired missiles, they shot down Russian plane and killed as many as 300 Russian paratroopers, in accordance with senior American and Ukrainian officers and the captured Russian logbook.

Fierce battles within the following days destroyed a lot of the airport, together with the prized Mriya cargo jet, however thwarted Russia’s plans.

“Yes, we lost our Mriya,” mentioned Col. Yuriy Ignat, the spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force Command. “But as a result the airport wasn’t lost.”

Russia not solely botched the assault by land and air, but additionally put an excessive amount of religion in one other wing of its vaunted arsenal: hacking.

Even earlier than the primary missiles and pictures have been fired, unit 74455 of the Russian Military Intelligence Directorate, or G.R.U., tried to infiltrate Ukrainian networks and shut them down.

Officials in Washington, who had been working intently with the Ukrainians to bolster their cyberdefenses for years, had been holding their breath. States had primarily used hacking for acts of espionage and monetary thievery, for subversion and sabotage. But no person actually knew how it might play out in a full-scale navy battle.

“All this stuff that has been written about cyberwar has been speculative,” mentioned a senior U.S. protection official. “For the first time, you have war and cyber together — the real thing.”

The Russian hacking unit, referred to as Sandworm, had lengthy menaced Ukraine, waging assaults in opposition to the ability grid beginning in 2015. But it was labor intensive, and solely considerably efficient. By one estimate, it took Sandworm about 19 months to organize the assault on an influence station in western Ukraine, but it solely brought about a six-hour energy outage.

A snippet of code utilized by hackers to attempt to disable Ukrainian authorities computer systems.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

A cyber cat-and-mouse sport ensued, with the United States, Britain and different allies serving to to shore up Ukrainian computer systems and stave off Russian intrusions.

On Feb. 23, hours earlier than the invasion started, Sandworm took one other swing, launching malware that contaminated a number of hundred Ukrainian authorities computer systems, officers mentioned. The intrusion was detected rapidly, the harm contained.

Then Sandworm struck once more. But the code it used regarded prefer it had been thrown collectively on the final minute, with programming errors — one other fail.

Sandworm wasn’t accomplished. In its boldest stroke but, it went after the Ukrainian navy’s satellite tv for pc communications, utilized by troopers within the area. It labored, and by 6:15 a.m. on Feb. 24, the system went down, proper at Ukraine’s most weak second.

It may have been a crippling blow. But the Ukrainian authorities had a backup plan: a separate satellite tv for pc communications system, which it had examined solely two months earlier than, to verify it was prepared within the occasion of a Russian invasion.

Russia had assumed its forces would march largely uncontested into Kyiv. When that didn’t occur, American officers suspect that Sandworm — like the remainder of the Russian navy — was caught off guard.

Soon, Russia’s missteps went from the delicate to the mundane.

With their plans for a speedy victory stymied, Russian forces have been immediately confronted with essentially the most primary of issues: They hadn’t introduced sufficient meals, water or different provides for a protracted marketing campaign. Soldiers resorted to looting grocery shops, hospitals and houses.

Security digital camera footage exhibiting Russian troopers looting a store, mentioned to be in Kherson, on Feb. 28.

u_now, by way of Telegram

“The guys were going from apartment to apartment and taking out large bags — looting in all its glory,” one Russian soldier wrote in mid-March in his diary, which was recovered by Ukrainian troops in japanese Ukraine and shared with a Times reporter embedded with them. “Some take only what they need, some take everything, from old nonfunctional phones to plasma TVs, computers, and expensive alcohol.”

In the diary, the soldier recounts attempting to find medication, meals and different necessities, describing the enjoyment his males felt getting into a grocery retailer.

“We found everything that we lacked so much, even sweets,” the soldier wrote. “Everyone rejoiced like children.”

A web page from the diary of a Russian soldier, recovered by Ukrainian troops, that described scavenging for sweet and socks.

He recounts practically dying in a mortar assault and stalking a Ukrainian armored personnel provider. But simply as usually, he seems involved with primary provisions for himself and his comrades, describing how they scoured a hospital and got here up with jam, cookies and raisins.

Two days later, he had extra luck. “I found socks that are now worth their weight in gold,” he wrote.

Some Russian troops panicked, and even resorted to self-sabotage. One Pentagon intelligence report mentioned that Russian navy drivers have been poking holes of their gasoline tanks, disabling their very own autos to keep away from going into battle.

The commander of a Ukrainian tank restore depot mentioned some 30 Russian T-80 tanks in seemingly excellent situation have been taken and delivered to him firstly of the battle. When his mechanics inspected, they discovered sand had been poured into the gas tanks, rendering them inoperable.

Ukrainian regulation enforcement officers began noticing one thing else suspicious as properly: a spike in international cellphone numbers close to the border, within the forests between Ukraine and Belarus.

Russian troopers have been utilizing cellphones to name residence, and immediately popping up on Ukrainian networks. Officials who monitor the visitors throughout peacetime for legal exercise rapidly realized they may see and listen to the invaders approaching in actual time.

“We listened to the Russian soldiers as they panicked and called their friends and relatives,” mentioned an official who oversees the cellphone intercepts. “They used ordinary phones to make decisions about their further moves.”

Down lengthy corridors guarded by locks with facial detection, behind doorways sealed with wax to detect intruders, groups of girls tracked the Russian troops from small listening cubicles whereas their pals and family members grabbed rifles to patrol the streets.

“We understood where the enemy was, what numbers they were using,” the official mentioned.

The eavesdroppers handed the main points to Ukraine’s armed forces to hold out ambushes and counterattacks. Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the pinnacle of Ukraine’s navy intelligence, mentioned Ukrainian forces used cellphone indicators and even TikTookay movies to focus on a unit of Chechen troopers referred to as the Kadyrovtsy, named for the strongman chief of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

It took 40 minutes from the time one video was uploaded to pinpoint the unit’s location close to the Hostomel airport northwest of Kyiv, Mr. Budanov mentioned. The Ukrainian navy then hit them with three Tochka-U ballistic missiles, he mentioned.

The Russians saved closing in on Kyiv, forcing the eavesdroppers tucked in listening rooms to make a fast determination: destroy their gear and flee for their very own security, or hold on and proceed gathering intelligence.

They stayed.

“We didn’t lose Ukraine. We didn’t let the enemy move further,” the official mentioned. “On the first days, when they made foolish mistakes, we used their foolish mistakes to our advantage.”

Hubris
“They saw a czar in him. He just went nuts.”

Consumed by his legacy, stewing in resentment in opposition to the West, Mr. Putin drove his nation to battle to seal his place in Russian historical past.

Hubris
“They saw a czar in him. He just went nuts.”

Consumed by his legacy, stewing in resentment in opposition to the West, Mr. Putin drove his nation to battle to seal his place in Russian historical past.

Fawning allies and aides fueled the conviction that Russia would simply overwhelm its neighbor.

He boasted of wielding a modernized navy behemoth, a far cry from its post-Soviet shell. Watching from afar, the West believed him.

William J. Burns, the director of the C.I.A., flew to Moscow, sat in a convention room close to the Kremlin and waited till the formalities have been over earlier than explaining the true motive he had come.

It was early November 2021. The United States believed Mr. Putin was contemplating a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Burns defined. If he proceeded down this path, Mr. Burns warned, the West would reply — decisively, in unison — and the implications for Russia can be extreme.

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Mr. Putin’s safety council, stiffened and regarded Mr. Burns within the eye, officers within the room mentioned. He deserted his notes and extolled the prowess of Russia’s armed forces. They had been so totally modernized below Mr. Putin that they now rivaled the United States militarily, he mentioned.

“Patrushev didn’t qualify it,” mentioned John Sullivan, the American ambassador to Russia on the time, who was there. “He was just looking at Burns and saying: ‘We can do this. We’re back.’ The way I would describe it was that this was already decided, and they were supremely confident. His message was, ‘It’s not going to be a problem for us to do what we want to do.’”

Mr. Burns briefed Mr. Biden upon his return to Washington, officers mentioned. Mr. Putin had all however made up his thoughts to take over Ukraine, Mr. Burns advised him, and the Russians had absolute confidence victory would come swiftly.

To Mr. Putin, Ukraine is a synthetic nation, utilized by the West to weaken Russia. He describes it as a cradle of Russian tradition, a centerpiece of Russian id that have to be wrested again from the West and returned to Russia’s orbit.

In his eyes, that’s the largest unfinished mission of his 22 years in energy, individuals who know him say.

He started as an unassuming bureaucrat-turned-president on New Year’s Eve, 1999, seen by the interior circle of his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, as a proficient supervisor who may carry stability with out threatening the ruling elite.

By his third decade in energy, Mr. Putin appears remodeled, individuals who have identified him because the Nineteen Nineties say. He kinds himself as a pivotal determine astride a millennium of Russian historical past — as he hinted when he unveiled a statue of Vladimir the Great, the medieval prince of Kyiv, outdoors the Kremlin partitions in 2016.

That Vladimir “entered history as a uniter and protector of Russian lands,” Mr. Putin mentioned.

The Vladimir at Russia’s helm within the twenty first century, Mr. Putin has more and more made plain, sees himself as carrying on that custom.

“If everyone around you is telling you for 22 years that you are a super-genius, then you will start to believe that this is who you are,” mentioned Oleg Tinkov, a former Russian banking tycoon who turned in opposition to Mr. Putin this yr. “Russian businesspeople, Russian officials, the Russian people — they saw a czar in him. He just went nuts.”

Mr. Putin rose to energy as a deft politician. He may flash attraction, humility and a smile, portray himself as an affordable chief to Russians and foreigners. He knew management his facial muscle mass in tense conversations, leaving his eyes as the one information to his feelings, individuals who know him mentioned.

But throughout his presidency, he more and more wallowed in a swirl of grievances and obsessions: the West’s supposed disregard for the Soviet Union’s position in defeating Nazi Germany; the worry that NATO would base nuclear missiles in Ukraine to strike Moscow; modern-day gender politics by which, Mr. Putin usually says, Mom and Dad are being changed by “Parent No. 1 and Parent No. 2.”

In the personalist system he has constructed, these quirks have world penalties.

“What he thinks about obsessively, and quite possibly falsely,” has ended up shaping “the biography of the whole world,” mentioned Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor.

Mr. Putin appeared to assume that solely he actually understood Ukraine. After annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, Mr. Putin bragged that he had overruled his personal advisers, who had thought-about the transfer too harmful due to the chance of sanctions and a Ukrainian navy response.

Back then, Mr. Putin’s instincts largely proved proper. The Ukrainian navy withdrew swiftly from Crimea — some troopers and sailors switched sides to hitch Russia — and the West’s restricted sanctions scarcely affected Russia’s financial system, sealing Mr. Putin’s confidence.

“I took responsibility for everything,” Mr. Putin mentioned after taking Crimea, in accordance with a confidant. “I will be gone sooner or later, but Crimea will have been returned to Russia forever.”

A professional-Russian rally on Crimea in 2014, the yr Russia seized the peninsula.

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Many of the individuals closest to Mr. Putin had an incentive to cater to the boss’s rising self-regard — and to amplify the exterior threats and historic injustices that Mr. Putin noticed himself as preventing in opposition to.

A former Putin confidant in contrast the dynamic to the radicalization spiral of a social media algorithm, feeding customers content material that provokes an emotional response.

“They read his mood and they start to slip him that kind of stuff,” he mentioned.

By the summer time of 2021, throughout a gathering that was speculated to be concerning the financial system, Mr. Putin railed as a substitute in opposition to the West and President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, which Mr. Putin usually cites as certainly one of America’s nice post-Cold War sins.

“We tried to partner with the West for many years, but the partnership was not accepted, it didn’t work,” Mr. Putin mentioned, recalled his visitor, who sat on the opposite finish of an extended desk.

The phrases had a type of finality to them, the customer mentioned: “It was like he was talking to himself, not to me.”

The visitor had spent three days in quarantine earlier than assembly with Mr. Putin at a distance of roughly 15 toes. It was a “light” possibility the Kremlin provided to individuals who sought face time with Mr. Putin however needed to keep away from the prolonged quarantines required for an up-close assembly with him, even within the pandemic’s second yr.

Mr. Putin assembly together with his protection minister and a prime navy official in February. The picture was launched by Russian state media.

Aleksey Nikolskyi/Sputnik, by way of Reuters

Mr. Putin’s isolation deepened his radicalization, individuals who know him say. He went 16 months with out assembly a single Western chief in particular person. He held nearly all his conferences by videoconference from nondescript rooms that left his actual location a thriller. Those who bought to see him in particular person noticed their affect rise in a system by which entry to Mr. Putin — known as “the boss” or “V.V.,” his first initials, by insiders — is essentially the most helpful of currencies.

“Our most important resource is not a medal, not money and not possession of anything,” mentioned Konstantin Zatulin, a member of Parliament in Mr. Putin’s United Russia get together. “Our main, most important resource is access to the president.”

On that rating, Yuri Kovalchuk, a conservative physicist and banking magnate who befriended Mr. Putin within the Nineteen Nineties, did properly throughout the pandemic. Mr. Kovalchuk bragged final yr that he had spent a number of months in 2020 with Mr. Putin at his residence on Lake Valdai, between St. Petersburg and Moscow, in accordance with an individual who met with him then.

Mr. Kovalchuk advised the person who Mr. Putin’s principal achievement was “militarization” — the creation of a military and a society prepared for battle.

The secretive Mr. Kovalchuk prides himself as a strategist who sees Russia locked in an existential battle with the West, in accordance with individuals who know him. In the final decade, he has expanded his tv and newspaper holdings, key elements of the Kremlin’s propaganda equipment.

A onetime Putin confidant mentioned Mr. Kovalchuk sees himself “as a visionary,” and the pandemic, given the extraordinary precautions Mr. Putin took, emerged as a chance for Mr. Kovalchuk to deepen his imprint on the president — and the nation.

Mr. Putin’s unfinished enterprise with Ukraine additionally fed a rising private animus towards Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine’s president, Vlodymyr Zelensky, at a information convention in Kyiv in March.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

When Mr. Zelensky was elected in a landslide in 2019, the Kremlin noticed him as somebody it may work with: a Russian-speaking comic who had lived in Moscow, carried out on Russian tv and received with a message of ending the battle in japanese Ukraine that Russia had fueled.

And partly as a result of Mr. Zelensky is Jewish, some in Moscow anticipated him to be powerful on Ukraine’s nationalist wing, which honored Ukrainian independence fighters who had fought alongside the Nazis within the closing battles of World War II.

“I think he is sincerely willing” to compromise with Russia, Mr. Putin mentioned of Mr. Zelensky in 2019. “It is his sincere conviction, at least his striving.”

By early 2021, the Kremlin’s hopes had been dashed. Mr. Zelensky cracked down on pro-Russian pursuits in Ukraine, shutting down pro-Russian tv channels and sanctioning Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch near Mr. Putin.

Mr. Putin confirmed his frustration in an extended assembly at his Sochi residence with Mr. Bennett, the brand new prime minister of Israel, in October 2021.

Mr. Putin charmed his visitor, taking him into his personal residence and pouring him a glass of whiskey. But when it got here to Ukraine, Mr. Putin flashed anger. Mr. Bennett famous that Mr. Zelensky was enthusiastic about assembly Mr. Putin head to head.

“I have nothing to discuss with this person,” Mr. Putin shot again, in accordance with two individuals conversant in the trade. “What kind of Jew is he? He’s an enabler of Nazism.”

Some Western officers imagine that, by that time, Mr. Putin might have already determined to go to battle. But in Russia, even amongst these with entry to Mr. Putin or his interior circle, nearly nobody thought that the president was critically contemplating a full-scale invasion, individuals near the Kremlin mentioned. They have been positive he was bluffing.

Mr. Remchukov, the newspaper editor, was certainly one of them. As the chairman of the 2018 election marketing campaign of Mayor Sergei S. Sobyanin of Moscow — Mr. Putin’s former chief of employees — he felt well-connected sufficient to fortunately announce to his spouse every week earlier than the invasion, “Lena, there won’t be a war!”

That day, he had met for 2 hours with a number of senior navy officers. Rather than betray any trace of pressure, they bantered about Mr. Remchukov’s newly svelte physique, queried him intimately about his weight-loss routine and casually mentioned their trip plans for early March.

After he got here residence and described the assembly to his spouse, he mentioned, “she kissed me and said: ‘What happiness!’”

The Americans, against this, feared the worst.

On Feb. 22, two days earlier than the invasion, Ukraine’s international minister, Dmytro Kuleba, went to the Pentagon and mentioned his nation desperately wanted Stingers, the shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III provided to assist earlier than asking how the Ukrainian authorities deliberate to maintain working after the Russians invaded. “If you get pushed out of Kyiv,” he mentioned, “where are you going to go?”

Mr. Kuleba replied: “I can’t even acknowledge that. We’re not even going to talk about that or think about that.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Mr. Austin mentioned. “But you need a plan.”

Soon, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined in, launching into what a senior American protection official described as a “‘you’re going to die’ speech.”

“They’re going to roll into Kyiv in a few days,” General Milley mentioned. “They’re coming in with tanks and columns of formations. You need to be ready for that. You need to be prepared. If you’re not, it’s going to be a slaughter.”

As General Milley spoke, Mr. Kuleba and members of his delegation sat again of their chairs, their eyes widening.

The Ukrainian air pressure had skilled with NATO members since 2011, and the partnership deepened after Russia took Crimea in 2014. Wary of one other invasion, they carried out fight workouts in Ukraine and California, making ready the nation’s air pressure to tackle its technologically superior enemy. In February, a secretive U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard crew known as Grey Wolf was arrange at Ramstein Air Base in Germany to assist the Ukrainians.

But General Milley nonetheless harbored severe doubts about Ukraine’s state of readiness. He had walked the halls of the Pentagon that winter with an unlimited inexperienced map of Ukraine, with more and more ominous projections from U.S. intelligence companies of Russia’s invasion plans. What’s extra, the American protection attaché on the embassy in Kyiv had spent weeks making an attempt to get Ukraine’s defensive plans, and those she obtained minimized, within the Pentagon’s view, the Russian risk.

Mr. Austin appeared considerably uncomfortable at General Milley’s blunt admonishment of the Ukrainian international minister and chimed in, reassuringly: “We’re going to do what we can to help these guys.”

The actuality was sluggish to sink in for a lot of in Moscow, too. Mr. Zatulin, a senior Putin ally in Russia’s Parliament, mentioned he bought his first inkling that the president was severe about an invasion in mid-February. Though referred to as a number one professional on Ukraine, Mr. Zatulin mentioned he was by no means consulted on the likelihood.

To the opposite, Mr. Zatulin mentioned he was scheduled to offer an deal with to the Russian Parliament on behalf of Mr. Putin’s United Russia get together on Feb. 15 that was speculated to sign the other — that there can be no invasion until Mr. Zelensky himself went on the offensive in Ukraine’s divided east. But simply 5 minutes earlier than the session was scheduled to start out, Mr. Zatulin mentioned, he bought a message from an aide: The get together’s management had canceled his speech.

“I was not ready for this turn of events,” Mr. Zatulin mentioned. “Everything connected to this decision turned out to be a surprise not just for me, but also for a great many of the people in power.”

Mr. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, insisted that he discovered concerning the invasion solely as soon as it had begun. Likewise, Anton Vaino, Mr. Putin’s chief of employees, and Aleksei Gromov, Mr. Putin’s highly effective media adviser, additionally mentioned they didn’t know upfront, in accordance with individuals who spoke to them about it.

The finest that senior aides may do was to attempt to learn Mr. Putin’s physique language. Some reported with concern that “he’s got this warlike twinkle in his eyes,” an individual near the Kremlin mentioned.

Russian howitzers being loaded onto prepare vehicles at a station outdoors Taganrog, Russia, days earlier than the invasion.

The New York Times

Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, mentioned that amid Russia’s navy buildup round Ukraine late final yr, a deputy minister requested him if he knew what was going to occur.

“That means that no one has told the deputy minister,” Mr. Markov mentioned. “Even some members” of Russia’s safety council “weren’t told until the last moment.”

Many elites discovered too late.

Russia’s principal industrial affiliation had been anticipating to satisfy with Mr. Putin in February. On the agenda, amongst different issues: the regulation of cryptocurrencies. But the assembly saved getting rescheduled, till lastly, on Feb. 22 or Feb. 23, the Kremlin notified members of the date: Feb. 24, the day Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine.

Andrey Melnichenko, a coal and fertilizer billionaire in that lobbying group, described how he awakened that day to the “madness” in Ukraine. But the assembly with Mr. Putin was nonetheless on, so a number of hours later, he was on the Kremlin, as scheduled. In an anteroom, shocked tycoons have been munching on sandwiches whereas awaiting the outcomes of their COVID-19 coronavirus swabs to clear them to share Mr. Putin’s air.

When Mr. Putin lastly appeared, the tv cameras have been rolling. He advised the assembled billionaires that he had no alternative however to invade.

Mr. Putin met with a gaggle of Russian oligarchs on the Kremlin on Feb. 24.

“What happened, in my view, is irrational,” mentioned Mr. Melnichenko, describing his response to the invasion. “It was shock.”

Another magnate recalled realizing — too late — that Mr. Putin was parading them in entrance of the tv cameras, for all of the world to see, for a rigorously deliberate function. The level was “specifically to tar everyone there,” he mentioned, “to get everyone sanctioned.”

There was no going again. They, like the remainder of Russia, have been on this with Mr. Putin now.

Sure sufficient, Mr. Melnichenko and all the opposite businessmen who appeared with Mr. Putin that day have been hit with sanctions by the West within the months that adopted.

Internal Rot
“Everyone was stealing and lying.”

Even because the Ukrainians rallied to beat again the Russian advance, Russian intelligence officers emailed directions to state media, telling it to painting beneficiant and triumphant Russian troops saving civilians from Ukraine’s villainous leaders.

Russia’s principal safety service, the F.S.B., labored hand in glove with the navy and state tv to mission the phantasm of success — and to hide the dysfunction.

Internal Rot
“Everyone was stealing and lying.”

Russia’s principal safety service, the F.S.B., labored hand in glove with the navy and state tv to mission the phantasm of success — and to hide the dysfunction.

Defeats turned accomplishments, as if mirrored by way of a carnival mirror. Despite Russia’s humiliating failure to grab Ukraine’s capital, its navy despatched TV crews a video about Ukrainians supposedly throwing down their NATO-provided weapons.

As Russian troops retreated from areas round Kyiv in March, the F.S.B. boasted concerning the heroics of Russian particular forces, claiming they stopped Ukrainians who terrorized pro-Russian civilians. In some circumstances, the company even provided language to cover the supply of the knowledge: “A SOURCE CLOSE TO THE POWER STRUCTURES OF RUSSIA!!!!”

The messages, drawn from tens of hundreds of emails leaked from Russia’s largest state-owned media firm and reviewed by The Times, present how at the very least one engine of the Russian battle effort purred alongside easily: the nation’s propaganda machine.

At occasions, Russia’s navy and the F.S.B. directed protection right down to the video clips performed and the time of publication. The emails, leaked from V.G.T.R.Ok., the state media big that oversees a few of Russia’s most-watched channels, portrayed Mr. Putin’s navy as backed right into a nook by NATO.

Once the complete invasion started, the machine downplayed Russian atrocities, bolstered conspiracy theories and tried to painting Ukrainian troops as abandoning their posts. (After the emails have been launched by a gaggle that publishes hacked paperwork, The Times verified the paperwork by confirming identities, e-mail addresses and broadcasts on the air.)

Off digital camera, state media staff had little to no concept what was really occurring. A state tv journalist mentioned in an interview that as late as April, his Kremlin sources have been nonetheless assuring him that the battle can be over inside days.

A professional-Russian Ukrainian politician known as for Mr. Zelensky to resign on a Russian state-run information channel.

“Tomorrow morning, there’ll be a statement,” the journalist recalled certainly one of his sources saying, solely to be proved unsuitable the subsequent day. “It was really kind of weird.”

But whereas state broadcasters saved delivering upbeat assessments, Mr. Putin privately acknowledged that his navy was struggling.

During the assembly in March with Mr. Bennett of Israel — when Mr. Putin conceded that the battle can be “much more difficult than we thought” — he returned to the theme that has develop into a fixation of his presidency: his place in Russian historical past.

Ukraine recaptures the North

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

“I won’t be the Russian leader who stood by and did nothing,” he advised Mr. Bennett, in accordance with two individuals conversant in the trade.

Once once more, Mr. Putin appeared satisfied that future generations of Russians may very well be threatened by the West. He had spent years making ready for exactly such a conflict, devoting a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} to Russia’s navy, supposedly to modernize it and strip out the corruption that had sapped it within the Nineteen Nineties.

But whereas Russia made important headway, Western officers mentioned, a tradition of graft and fraud persevered below Mr. Putin that emphasised loyalty above honesty, and even talent. The end result was a hodgepodge of elite troops and bedraggled conscripts, superior tanks and battalions that have been highly effective solely on paper.

“Everyone was stealing and lying. This was a Soviet, and now Russian, tradition,” mentioned Col. Vaidotas Malinionis, a retired Lithuanian commander who served within the Soviet navy within the Nineteen Eighties. Looking at satellite tv for pc photographs of the military camp the place he served, he mentioned the previous barracks and mess corridor have been nonetheless there, with no signal of modernization, and some buildings had fallen down. “There has been no evolution at all, only regression,” he mentioned.

European, American and Ukrainian officers warned in opposition to underestimating Russia, saying it had improved after its muddled invasion of Georgia in 2008. The protection minister overhauled the armed forces, forcibly retired about 40,000 officers and tried to impose extra transparency on the place cash went.

“He made a lot of enemies,” mentioned Dara Massicot, a RAND researcher who research the Russian navy.

Then, in 2012, that minister — answerable for dragging the navy out of its post-Soviet dysfunction — turned embroiled in a corruption scandal himself. Mr. Putin changed him with Sergei Ok. Shoigu, who had no navy expertise however was seen as somebody who may clean ruffled feathers.

“Russia drew a lot of lessons from the Georgia war and started to rebuild their armed forces, but they built a new Potemkin village,” mentioned Gintaras Bagdonas, the previous head of Lithuania’s navy intelligence. Much of the modernization drive was “just pokazukha,” he mentioned, utilizing a Russian time period for window-dressing.

Contractors like Sergei Khrabrykh, a former Russian Army captain, have been recruited into the stagecraft. He mentioned he bought a panicked name in 2016 from a deputy protection minister. A delegation of officers was scheduled to tour a coaching base of certainly one of Russia’s premier tank items, the Kantemirovskaya Tank Division, whose historical past dates to the victories of World War II.

Billions of rubles had been allotted for the bottom, Mr. Khrabrykh mentioned, however many of the cash was gone and just about not one of the work had been accomplished. He mentioned the minister begged him to rework it right into a modern-looking facility earlier than the delegation arrived.

“They needed to be guided around the territory and shown that the Kantemirovskaya Division was the coolest,” Mr. Khrabrykh mentioned. He was given about $1.2 million and a month to do the job.

As he toured the bottom, Mr. Khrabrykh was shocked by the dilapidation. The Ministry of Defense had hailed the tank division as a unit that might defend Moscow in case of a NATO invasion. But the barracks have been unfinished, with particles strewn throughout the flooring, massive holes within the ceiling and half-built cinder-block partitions, in accordance with pictures Mr. Khrabrykh and his colleagues took. A tangle {of electrical} wires hung from a thin pole.

“Just about everything was destroyed,” he mentioned.

The inside of a tank base constructing.

Sergei Khrabrykh

The similar base after work was accomplished to cowl up its state.

Sergei Khrabrykh

Before the delegation arrived, Mr. Khrabrykh mentioned, he rapidly constructed low-cost facades and hung banners, lined in footage of tanks and boasting the military was “stronger and sturdier year by year,” to disguise the worst of the decay. On the tour, he mentioned, the guests have been guided alongside a cautious route by way of the best-looking a part of the bottom — and evaded the bogs, which had not been repaired.

After the invasion began, the Kantemirovskaya Division pressed into northeastern Ukraine, solely to be ravaged by Ukrainian forces. Crews limped away with lots of their tanks deserted or destroyed.

Russian prosecutors have pursued hundreds of officers and others for corruption in recent times: One colonel was accused of embezzling cash meant for automobile batteries, one other of fraud round cell kitchens. The deputy chief of the overall employees was charged with defrauding the state over radio gear, and a serious basic sentenced to jail within the case.

In 2019, Russia’s chief navy prosecutor mentioned that greater than 2,800 officers had been disciplined over corruption violations prior to now yr alone.

After the invasion, American officers observed that a lot of Russia’s gear was poorly manufactured or briefly provide. Tires on wheeled autos fell aside, stalling convoys, whereas troopers resorted to crowdfunding for garments, crutches and different primary provides because the battle wore on.

But much more consequential than the corruption, officers and analysts mentioned, have been the methods Mr. Putin basically misunderstood his personal navy.

Russia had, in truth, spent 20 years preparing for a radically completely different form of battle.

It had not ready its navy to invade and occupy a rustic as massive and highly effective as Ukraine, officers and analysts mentioned. Instead, Russia had largely organized its navy to maintain U.S. and NATO forces away by inflicting most harm from afar.

Central to this technique was a sequence of outposts — Kaliningrad by the Baltic, Crimea within the Black Sea, and the Syrian port of Tartus on the Mediterranean — to make use of long-range missiles to maintain Western forces at bay. In the occasion of battle, Russia supposed to blind the enemy and destroy it from a distance, American officers mentioned.

But on this case, Russia didn’t crush Ukraine with weeks of missile strikes upfront. It marched in rapidly with forces on the bottom.

Unlike its extra restricted campaigns in locations like Syria — or the large hypothetical battle with NATO it had lengthy deliberate for — the invasion of Ukraine was merely “not what the Russian military was designed to do,” placing it ready it was most likely “least prepared” to take care of, mentioned Clint Reach, a researcher at RAND.

In different phrases, the Kremlin picked the “stupidest” of all potential navy choices by dashing ahead and making an attempt to take over Ukraine, mentioned General Budanov, the Ukrainian navy intelligence chief.

Russia had not skilled its infantry, air and artillery forces to work in live performance, transfer rapidly after which do all of it once more from a brand new location, officers mentioned. It didn’t have a transparent Plan B after the march on Kyiv failed, and commanders had lengthy been afraid to report dangerous information to their bosses.

Russian goals get smaller

Throughout the summer time, Russia makes incremental positive aspects within the East.

Areas of Russian management

Areas of present Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

“The collective system of circular, mutual self-deception is the herpes of the Russian Army,” the pro-Russian militia commander Aleksandr Khodakovsky wrote on Telegram in June.

The mounting failures drove a cadre of pro-Russian navy bloggers to a boiling level. While nonetheless cheerleaders for the battle, they started to brazenly criticize Russia’s efficiency.

“I’ve been keeping quiet for a long time,” the blogger Yuri Podolyaka mentioned in May, after a whole bunch of troopers died in a river crossing. “Due to stupidity — I emphasize, because of the stupidity of the Russian command — at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two.”

A Ukrainian soldier atop an deserted Russian tank at a river crossing the place a whole bunch of Russian troopers died.

Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

The fury ultimately reached Mr. Putin himself. On the sidelines of his marquee annual financial convention in St. Petersburg in June, the president held a gathering that had develop into a convention: a sit-down with information media chiefs. This time, although, the bloggers have been the headline friends.

Mr. Putin sat alone at one finish in a cavernous corridor, in accordance with one attendee, who supplied a photograph of the personal gathering. Some of the bloggers took the ground and peppered Mr. Putin with messages and complaints from the entrance.

“It became a very concrete conversation, a surprising one for us,” the particular person current mentioned. “We’d never had such conversations.”

It appeared to the particular person there that Russia’s intelligence companies have been utilizing the bloggers to shift the blame for the battle’s failings to the Ministry of Defense. Mr. Zatulin, the Putin ally in Parliament, insisted he supported the battle, however mentioned a blame sport has damaged out, and took a aspect himself.

“Of course, to a certain degree, we now have an element of everyone wanting to dump the responsibility on someone else,” Mr. Zatulin mentioned.

“But I think that the main miscalculations,” he added, “were made by the Defense Ministry and the General Staff” — the navy’s prime brass.

Collapsing Front
“Nobody is going to stay alive.”

Ruslan was 54 years previous, at battle in Ukraine, and gave the impression to be studying to make use of his weapon on the fly.

Collapsing Front
“Nobody is going to stay alive.”

Ruslan was 54 years previous, at battle in Ukraine, and gave the impression to be studying to make use of his weapon on the fly.

In his pack, he had printouts from Wikipedia, describing the rifle he was carrying and directions to assist him shoot precisely.

He additionally carried footage of enemy commanders, stamped “WANTED” in crimson.

A photocopied letter provided motivation: “Soldiers, take care of yourself and come back home swiftly to your family and close ones healthy and alive,” it learn. “Goodbye.”

His mission appeared clear sufficient. With his marksman’s rifle, bundle of papers and copies of his Russian passport in his pack, Ruslan was certainly one of hundreds of poorly skilled, underequipped males requested to defend an enormous swath of territory that Russia had seized in northeastern Ukraine.

By summer time’s finish, Russian leaders had despatched their finest troops far to the south, leaving skeleton crews behind. So when the Ukrainians swept in and attacked the northeast, hoping to recapture occupied land, troopers like Ruslan have been minimize down or melted away in a chaotic retreat.

Military analysts had warned of such a hazard earlier than the invasion. Even as tens of hundreds of Russian troopers massed ominously alongside Ukraine’s borders, they mentioned, the Kremlin had not despatched sufficient to occupy the complete nation. The Russian battle plans for the twenty sixth Tank Regiment signaled the identical downside: Expect no reinforcements.

Russia managed to take territory, often at monumental price. But hold it was usually an afterthought.

“The army, the generals, the soldiers weren’t ready,” mentioned Mr. Tsaryov, the person American officers recognized as a puppet chief the Kremlin may set up in Ukraine.

A kindergarten classroom close to Izium was used as a base by retreating Russian troopers and emblazoned with the navy image “Z” in September.

Nicole Tung for The New York Times

He mentioned the Russian Army had unfold itself so skinny throughout Ukraine after invading that it “would move through cities and not leave behind even a garrison, even a small one to stick up a Russian flag and defend it.”

In the northeastern area of Kharkiv, Russian commanders put males like Ruslan at roadblocks and moved on.

Ukrainians break by way of within the Kharkiv area

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

He had little else apart from the printouts in his pack, which Ukrainian troopers recovered with what they imagine to be his physique in September. The rifle subsequent to him advised he was a sniper. But whereas snipers in trendy militaries usually undergo weeks of further particular coaching, Ruslan’s trainer gave the impression to be the web.

“Hello dear soldier!” learn the unsigned letter in his pack. “You have to risk your life so that we can live peacefully. Thanks to you and your comrades our army remains so strong, mighty and can protect us from any enemy.”

More than 50 pages of Russian paperwork, collected from three cities within the Kharkiv area and reviewed by The Times, present a timeless reality: Foot troopers bear the outsize burden of fight.

The paperwork — shared with three unbiased navy consultants, who thought-about them credible — element how Russia relied on bedraggled backup forces, lots of them separatist fighters from Ukraine’s lengthy battle in its divided east, to carry territory because the common Russian Army fought a whole bunch of miles away.

The 202nd Rifle Regiment of the Luhansk People’s Republic — Kremlin-backed separatists in japanese Ukraine — was certainly one of them. It had practically 2,000 males, however was nearly utterly depending on foot troopers.

More than a dozen pages of its rosters element the particulars of the unit’s struggling, right down to a scarcity of heat clothes and boots.

Several of its troopers have been of their 50s, together with one who skilled “cardiac failure,” whereas certainly one of its youngest casualties, a 20-year-old named Vladimir, endured “frostbite of the lower limbs.” Yet one other complained on a cellphone name intercepted by the Ukrainians that he had no armored vest and a helmet from the Forties.

An excerpt from a roster of troopers from the 202nd Rifle Regiment of the Luhansk People’s Republic.

“Our battalion, for instance, has already gone more than three weeks without receiving ammunition from the army,” the pro-Russian militia commander, Mr. Khodakovsky, mentioned on Telegram in September.

In an interview, one other soldier described having solely the vaguest sense of use his weapon.

He recounted being suggested to fireplace judiciously, one spherical at a time, slightly than blasting his rifle uncontrollably. But he wasn’t positive how to try this. So, shortly earlier than going into fight, he mentioned, he turned to a commander and requested swap his rifle off totally computerized.

Russia got here to depend on such battered, inexperienced troops after months of ways that extra intently resembled 1917 than 2022. Commanders despatched waves of troops into the vary of heavy artillery, eking out a number of yards of territory at grievous tolls.

When one Russian unit arrived in japanese Ukraine, it was rapidly whittled right down to a haggard few, in accordance with certainly one of its troopers.

During preventing within the spring, he mentioned, his commanders ordered an offensive, promising artillery to assist the assault. It by no means got here, he mentioned, and his unit was devastated.

Yet commanders despatched them proper again into the melee all the identical.

“How much time has passed now? Nine months, I think?” he mentioned. “In this whole time, nothing has changed. They have not learned. They have not drawn any conclusions from their mistakes.”

He recounted one other battle by which commanders despatched troopers down the identical path to the entrance, again and again. On every journey, he mentioned, our bodies fell round him. Finally, after being ordered to go a fifth time, he and his unit refused to go, he mentioned.

In all, he mentioned, his unit misplaced about 70 p.c of its troopers to loss of life and damage, ruining any religion he had in his commanders.

“Nobody is going to stay alive,” he mentioned. “One way or another, one weapon or another is going to kill you.”

American officers realized early on that they’d vastly overestimated Russia’s navy. The morale of rank-and-file troopers was so low, the Americans mentioned, that Russia started shifting its generals to the entrance traces to shore it up.

But the generals made a lethal mistake: They positioned themselves close to antennas and communications arrays, making them straightforward to search out, the Americans mentioned.

Ukraine began killing Russian generals, but the dangerous Russian visits to the entrance traces continued. Finally, in late April, the Russian chief of the overall employees, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, made secret plans to go himself.

American officers mentioned they discovered, however saved the knowledge from the Ukrainians, frightened they might strike. Killing General Gerasimov may sharply escalate the battle, officers mentioned, and whereas the Americans have been dedicated to serving to Ukraine, they didn’t need to set off a battle between the United States and Russia.

The Ukrainians discovered of the overall’s plans anyway, placing the Americans in a bind. After checking with the White House, senior American officers requested the Ukrainians to name off the assault.

“We told them not to do it,” a senior American official mentioned. “We were like, ‘Hey, that’s too much.’”

The message arrived too late. Ukrainian navy officers advised the Americans that they’d already launched their assault on the overall’s place.

Dozens of Russians have been killed within the strike, officers mentioned. General Gerasimov wasn’t certainly one of them.

Russian navy leaders scaled again their visits to the entrance after that.

Divided Ranks
“Wagner almost always fights alone.”

They deployed tanks, heavy artillery and fighter jets.

Divided Ranks
“Wagner almost always fights alone.”

They deployed tanks, heavy artillery and fighter jets.

They pushed out their very own propaganda and ran recruiting facilities.

And they fought on the entrance line in Ukraine.

But they didn’t reply on to the Russian navy. They belonged to a mercenary group, referred to as Wagner.

And they turned certainly one of Mr. Putin’s shadow armies in Ukraine, usually performing as a rival to the Russian navy.

Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has lengthy been a crony of the Russian president.

To take part Mr. Putin’s battle, he has recruited prisoners, trashed the Russian navy and competed with it for weapons.

More than 20 years right into a homicide sentence, Yevgeny Nuzhin noticed his probability at salvation swoop in by helicopter.

Mr. Prigozhin — the shut confidant of Mr. Putin, identified for stirring up hassle throughout the Middle East and Africa together with his mercenary military, Wagner — got here to Mr. Nuzhin’s jail south of Moscow in August, on the lookout for recruits.

Heaving with patriotic fervor, Mr. Prigozhin gave the form of speech he has delivered at different Russian prisons in latest months, some shared on-line. In one, additionally from August, Mr. Prigozhin, wearing a colorless beige uniform, promised pardons for the inmates who made it again from Ukraine alive. Those who didn’t, he mentioned, would “be buried in the alleys of the heroes.”

He additionally issued a warning: Anyone pondering of deserting his forces as soon as in Ukraine, he mentioned within the video, can be shot.

Mr. Nuzhin accepted Mr. Prigozhin’s supply, however ignored the warning.

After two days on the entrance, the place he spent his time gathering the our bodies of useless Wagner troopers, he used the duvet of darkness to slide away and give up to Ukrainian troops.

“What good has Putin done in the time that he has been in power? Has he done anything good?” Mr. Nuzhin advised The Times after being taken into Ukrainian custody. “I think this war is Putin’s grave.”

Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, a Russian prisoner of battle held by Ukraine, in October.

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Mr. Putin’s reliance on mercenaries and convicts is without doubt one of the extra uncommon options of his battle in Ukraine. Mr. Prigozhin is only one of a handful of strongmen lively within the battle, all of them managed by Mr. Putin, who has carved up the administration of a lot of Russia into competing fiefs run by individuals loyal to him above all.

Beyond the mercenaries managed by Mr. Prigozhin, who rose to prominence as a caterer of Kremlin occasions, there’s additionally the Russian nationwide guard, overseen by Mr. Putin’s former bodyguard. And there’s the unit commanded by the Chechen chief, Mr. Kadyrov — whose fighters have been discovered and attacked due to their misadventures on TikTookay.

As far as officers can inform, the Russian navy has restricted coordination with any of them.

“There was no unified command, there was no single headquarters, there was no single concept and there was no unified planning of actions and command,” mentioned General Ivashov, the retired Russian officer who warned the battle would go badly. “It was destined to be a defeat.”

The splintered Russian forces have sparred brazenly. After Russian forces withdrew from northeast Ukraine in late summer time, Mr. Kadyrov known as for the Russian commander accountable to be demoted to non-public and shipped to the entrance, “to wash his shame away with blood.”

Mr. Prigozhin weighed in, too: “All these bastards should go with machine guns barefoot to the front.”

The public finger-pointing has added to a way of disarray throughout the Russian battle effort. Mr. Putin has changed a number of prime navy commanders. Yet he has caught with Mr. Shoigu, his protection minister, and with General Gerasimov, the chief of the navy’s basic employees, as a result of firing them would quantity to a public acknowledgment that the battle goes badly, an admission Mr. Putin is loath to make, argued General Budanov, the Ukrainian navy intelligence chief.

“They are still trying to maintain the illusion that everything is going well,” he mentioned.

The friction has, at occasions, run all the best way right down to the troops within the battle zone.

After a battlefield argument within the Zaporizhzhia area over the summer time, a Russian tank commander drove his T-90 tank not on the enemy however towards a gaggle of Russian nationwide guard troops, firing at their checkpoint and blowing it up, mentioned Fidar Khubaev, describing himself as а Russian drone operator who witnessed the episode.

“Those types of things happen there,” mentioned Mr. Khubaev, including that he fled Russia within the fall.

Of all of the supplementary armies charging into Ukraine, Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner has develop into particularly pivotal. Its troops have obtained glowing protection on Russian state tv, and in November they have been profiled in a documentary movie known as “Wagner: Contract with the Motherland” produced by RT, one of many Kremlin’s major propaganda retailers.

“Until recently, Wagner has been one of the most closed and secretive organizations, but for us they have made a huge exception,” Andrey Yashchenko, the movie’s presenter, says within the opening montage, which reveals tanks rolling by way of rubble-strewn villages.

In the primary 5 months of the battle, there was nearly no public point out of Wagner or Mr. Prigozhin’s involvement in Ukraine. By late summer time, because the Russian navy started to break down below Ukrainian campaigns within the northeast and south, Mr. Prigozhin stepped into the highlight.

After years of denying any hyperlinks to Wagner — and typically its very existence — Mr. Prigozhin immediately went public, making a present of visiting his troops in Ukraine, handing out medals, attending funerals and trumpeting his independence on the battlefield.

Mr. Prigozhin attending a soldier’s funeral on Sept. 23.

v1.ru

“Wagner almost always fights alone,” he mentioned in an Oct. 14 submit on the web page of his catering firm on VK, a Russian social media web site.

A Times evaluation of movies in Ukraine discovered that Wagner troops are sometimes showcasing a few of Russia’s most superior weaponry, together with tanks, fighter plane and thermobaric rocket launchers. And due to his reference to the president, Mr. Prigozhin is given precedence over different navy items for arms and gear, a senior European official mentioned.

Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, denied that Russia’s separate preventing forces have been inflicting confusion or division, insisting all of them report back to Russia’s prime navy brass. The prominence of Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Kadyrov, he mentioned, was merely a operate of their public-relations efforts.

“Some people are more active in the information space, some people are less active,” Mr. Peskov mentioned. “But it doesn’t signify any, let’s say, independence.”

Despite its weaponry and bravado, Wagner has struggled on the battlefield. Some Ukrainian troopers say it’s a formidable foe. Yet for practically six months, Wagner’s troops have been making an attempt to grab the small industrial metropolis of Bakhmut, within the japanese Donetsk area, and have been saved at bay by Ukrainian forces at nice price to either side — prompting a uncommon public acknowledgment of Ukraine’s preventing prowess.

The frontline metropolis of Bakhmut, the place Wagner forces have fought for months.

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

“The situation is difficult but stable,” Mr. Prigozhin mentioned within the Oct. 14 submit. “The Ukrainians are offering dignified resistance. The legend about Ukrainians running away is just that, a legend. Ukrainians are guys with steel balls just like us. This isn’t a bad thing. As Slavs, we should take pride in this.”

Hundreds of Wagner troops have been killed within the battle, and several other of the group’s fighter jets have been downed. The convicts Mr. Prigozhin has recruited seem like little greater than cannon fodder and make up a overwhelming majority of casualties amongst Wagner forces, in accordance with an evaluation by Ukraine’s navy intelligence company, which mentioned in October that about 8,000 Wagner troops have been preventing in Ukraine.

Another former Russian inmate recruited by Mr. Prigozhin mentioned he was left in a shallow trench on the entrance traces close to Bakhmut for 4 days with no meals or water and little sense of what he was speculated to be doing, aside from dragging away the various our bodies of his useless comrades.

It was no marvel, he mentioned, that a few of Wagner’s recruits determined to flee.

To hold management, Mr. Prigozhin has resorted to excessive punishment, exhibiting how the battle has whittled away the vestiges of rule of regulation in Russia.

Like Mr. Putin, whose spies have been accused of poisoning and assassinating perceived traitors all around the world, Mr. Prigozhin has mentioned that treachery is the worst sin any Russian can commit. He has proposed establishing his personal Gestapo-like police pressure to seek out the disloyal, together with, he has mentioned, Russian businessmen “who leave our country in their business jets.”

The destiny of Mr. Nuzhin serves as a grisly warning.

Mindful of the pressures on prisoners of battle and the dangers they face, The Times has chosen to withhold their names. And, as with the opposite individuals we interviewed, we use paperwork and different proof to vet their claims.

In Mr. Nuzhin’s case, we didn’t publish our interview with him, however he additionally spoke to Ukrainian media, which broadcast parts of his account. Soon after, he was launched in a prisoner swap — and ended up again within the arms of Wagner.

He then appeared in a video on a pro-Russian Telegram account. In it, Mr. Nuzhin’s head was taped to a block. Looming over him was a person in camouflage, holding a sledgehammer.

“I woke up in this basement, where I was told that I will be judged,” Mr. Nuzhin says within the video, his voice dry and gravelly. The sledgehammer then swings down and crushes his cranium.

Shortly after, Mr. Prigozhin launched a press release endorsing Mr. Nuzhin’s homicide.

“Nuzhin betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed them consciously,” the assertion mentioned. “He planned his escape. Nuzhin is a traitor.”

A day later, requested concerning the video on a convention name with journalists, Mr. Peskov mentioned, “It’s not our business.”

Cannon Fodder
“They’ll have a glass of vodka for you.”

For a lot of the battle, Russian forces held onto a shiny spot: the town of Kherson, the one regional capital they’d captured because the invasion started.

Cannon Fodder
“They’ll have a glass of vodka for you.”

For a lot of the battle, Russian forces held onto a shiny spot: the town of Kherson, the one regional capital they’d captured because the invasion started.

But the Russians withdrew from the town in November. Intercepted cellphone calls from Russian troopers within the area confirmed their bitterness as they have been coming below fireplace — with a lot of their anger directed at their commanders.

00:17

Vadyulya, is it true that you just hand over your positions on a regular basis?

Yes.

What is happening?

Darling I fucking don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening. Everybody asks identical to you do: why the fuck are we retreating? Where is that this fucking Russian military?

Replay with sound

The defeat carried a specific sting, as a result of Russia had tried to assimilate the inhabitants of Kherson and stamp out Ukrainian id.

00:06

What concerning the bastard?

What is the information from Putin?

What is that this scumbag bastard saying?

Replay with sound

Some troopers felt sacrificed by hypocritical commanders making an attempt to avoid wasting themselves.

00:18

Some deputy commander of the military got here right here. A fucker.

He noticed all this fucking mess.

He mentioned, ‘You could be sentenced if you leave your position, if you run away.’

Fucking think about, when mortar shelling started, are you aware how briskly they fucking left?

His wheels didn’t even get caught within the mud.

Replay with sound

Bracing for loss of life, some troopers slipped into despair.

00:10

They’re making ready you to be cannon fodder.

They’ll keep in mind you for 5 fucking minutes.

They’ll have a glass of vodka for you.

And then fucking neglect clear about you.

Fuck.

Replay with sound

The resignation exists in Moscow, too, the place opposition to the battle is widespread, however not often expressed above whispers.

“We’re giving each other looks, but to say something is impossible,” one former Putin confidant in Moscow mentioned, describing the ambiance within the halls of energy.

A priest blessing males conscripted into the Russian forces in Moscow in October.

Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

Mr. Tinkov, the previous tycoon who based certainly one of Russia’s largest banks, posted on Instagram in April that the battle was “crazy” and excoriated Mr. Putin in an interview with The Times, pondering he’d set the stage for extra of Russia’s highly effective to comply with go well with.

“Why didn’t anyone speak out after me?” Mr. Tinkov lamented.

One distinguished Russian public determine who privately described the battle as a “catastrophe” defined his silence by quoting the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

In the day of Galileo, certainly one of his poems says, one other scientist was additionally “well aware the earth revolved” across the solar, however he “had a large family to feed.”

By maintaining Russia’s borders open, regardless of calls from hard-liners to close them, Mr. Putin has allowed Russians unhappiest with the battle — who might need in any other case protested — to go away the nation. And the West’s wide-ranging sanctions haven’t turned the elite in opposition to Mr. Putin, at the very least not publicly.

“In textbooks, they call this political terrorism,” mentioned Mr. Melnichenko, the coal and fertilizer billionaire. “To say anything at gunpoint, even if you want to say it — it’s better not to.”

Mr. Melnichenko has been penalized — unfairly, he insists — for the Russian invasion. The Italians mentioned they seized his 468-foot sailboat that includes an underwater remark pod within the keel, and sanctions compelled him to desert his longtime residence in Switzerland. He now holds courtroom on white couches within the foyer of a luxurious resort in Dubai.

Mr. Melnichenko provided some veiled criticism of the invasion, declaring that “any war is horrible — the faster it ends, the better.” But he insisted he was powerless to do something to hasten its finish, and that any additional opinions “would trigger immediate risks.”

Ukrainians recapture Kherson within the South

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Areas of Russian management

Areas of Russian management earlier than invasion

Reclaimed by Ukraine

Despite the sanctions, Mr. Putin sees himself on a far grander timeline than the election cycles and shifting political winds steering Western leaders, who come and go, those that know him say. In June, he in contrast himself to Peter the Great as a pacesetter “returning” and “strengthening” Russian lands.

When the 18th-century czar based St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin mentioned, the Europeans didn’t take into account that territory to be Russian — suggesting that Mr. Putin expects the West to sometime come round and acknowledge his conquests as properly.

In late November, at his suburban Moscow residence, Mr. Putin met with moms of Russian troopers. It was a distant echo of one of many lowest moments of his tenure: his encounter with the households of sailors aboard a sunken submarine in 2000, when a crying lady in a distant Arctic city demanded, “Where is my son?”

Twenty-two years later, the Kremlin was cautious to forestall such outpourings of grief. Around an extended desk with particular person teapots for the handpicked ladies — a few of them state staff and pro-Kremlin activists — Mr. Putin confirmed no regret for sending Russians to their deaths.

After all, he advised one lady who mentioned her son was killed in Ukraine, tens of hundreds of Russians die annually from automobile accidents and alcohol abuse. Rather than ingesting himself to loss of life, he advised her, her son died with a function.

“Some people, are they even living or not living? It’s unclear. And how they die, from vodka or something else, it’s also unclear,” Mr. Putin mentioned. “But your son lived, you understand? He reached his goal.”

He advised one other mom that her son was not solely preventing “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, but additionally correcting the errors after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia “enthusiastically indulged in the fact” that the West was “trying to control us.”

“They have a different cultural code,” he advised her. “They count the genders there by the dozens.”

It was a stark show of Mr. Putin’s preoccupations and revanchist politics. But a number of individuals who have identified him for many years rejected any notion that he had grown irrational.

“He’s not crazy and he’s not sick,” an individual who has identified Mr. Putin because the Nineteen Nineties mentioned. “He’s an absolute dictator who made a wrong decision — a smart dictator who made a wrong decision.”

Mr. Putin has proven few hints that he’s prepared to show again now. Last month, the C.I.A. director, Mr. Burns, met for the primary time because the invasion with Sergei Naryshkin, the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia. The assembly, on the headquarters of Turkish intelligence in Ankara, occurred to reopen a direct, in-person line of communication between Washington and Moscow, however the tone was not certainly one of reconciliation.

According to senior officers current, Mr. Naryshkin mentioned Russia would by no means hand over, irrespective of what number of troops it misplaced on the battlefield. This month, Ukrainian leaders warned that Russia is perhaps massing troops and arms to launch a brand new offensive by spring.

The world has been debating Mr. Putin’s willingness to make use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. People who know him don’t low cost the likelihood, however additionally they imagine he expects to defeat the West and Ukraine in a long-term, non-nuclear take a look at of wills.

As one senior NATO intelligence official put it, Russian generals “acknowledge the incompetence, lack of coordination, lack of training. They all recognize these problems.” Still, they appear assured of an “eventual victory” as a result of, the official mentioned, “Putin believes this is a game of chicken between him and the West, and he believes the West will blink first.”

Mr. Putin has already proven a expertise for the lengthy sport, agreed Mr. Tinkov, the banking magnate who turned in opposition to the Kremlin, noting how the Russian chief had spent many years bringing Russia’s elite to heel.

“He slowly outplayed everyone, because the thing was: It was like he had unlimited time,” Mr. Tinkov mentioned. “He is still behaving in this war as though he has an unlimited amount of time — as though he plans to live for 200 years.”

Domestically, the stress on Mr. Putin has been pretty muted. For all of the losses his military has endured, there have been no important uprisings amongst Russian troops. Even the newly drafted proceed to go with out severe protest.

Aleksandr, the soldier drafted into the a hundred and fifty fifth, continues to be enraged on the method he and his comrades have been dropped into Ukraine with few bullets for his or her ageing rifles and compelled to dwell in a cowshed with just a few meal packets to share. His commanders flat-out lied, he mentioned, telling them they have been going for added coaching — when in truth they have been despatched to the entrance traces, the place most have been killed or grievously wounded.

After months of preventing, Russia introduced final month that it had lastly captured Pavlivka, however troopers mentioned it got here at large price.

Aleksandr had been drafted in September together with three shut childhood pals, he mentioned. He and one other suffered concussions. One misplaced each legs. The fourth is lacking.

But when he’s discharged from the hospital, he mentioned, he totally expects to return to Ukraine, and would accomplish that willingly.

“This is how we are raised,” he mentioned. “We grew up in our country understanding that it doesn’t matter how our country treats us. Maybe this is bad. Maybe this is good. Maybe there are things we do not like about our government.”

But, he added, “when a situation like this arises, we get up and go.”

A burning oil depot that native residents mentioned had been hit by a Russian mortar barrage in Kherson.

Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times