Vladimir Putin has become so personally involved in the Ukraine war that he is making operational and tactical decisions "at the level of a colonel or brigadier”, according to western military sources. The Russian president is helping to determine the movement of forces in the Donbas, they added, where last week Russia suffered a bloody defeat as it repeatedly tried to cross a strategic river in the east of Ukraine.
They added that Putin was still working closely with Gen Valery Gerasimov, the commander of the Russian armed forces, in contrast to claims made by Ukraine last week that the military chief had been sidelined.
"We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision-making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier," the military source said, referring to the continuing battle in the east of Ukraine.
The Russian armed forces have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough in the Donbas, where they have been mounting an offensive for a month that has failed several times to encircle the numerically smaller Ukrainian forces.
No further detail to back up the statement was provided, although it was implied that the assessment about Putin's close personal involvement was based on intelligence that had been received.
Colonels in the US army and brigadiers in the British army typically command a brigade, units made up of a handful of battalions - the latter of which is equivalent to the smallest operating unit in the Russian army.
Ben Barry, a former brigadier in the British army, and a land warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "A head of government should have better things to do than make day-to-day military decisions. They should be setting the political strategy rather than getting bogged down in day-to-day activity."
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