Russian military culture of lying distorts Putin's view of frontline, analysts say

The Russian army has a “pervasive culture of lying” over battlefield gains which has left Vladimir Putin with a “severely distorted” view of the frontline situation in Ukraine, military analysts have said.

Several Russian military bloggers have offered a bleak picture of the frontline near Lyman in the Donetsk region, where Ukrainian counterattacks are pushing back Russia’s forward positions and exposing misleading military reports from Russian forces.

One milblogger, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), argued that “‘beautiful reports” - a term milbloggers have coined to refer to the pervasive culture of lying within the Russian armed forces and misinformation about the state of the frontlines - need to be “absolutely forbidden’”.

The claims have led the Russian president to have a “severely distorted” view of the frontline situation, which has led him to make “absurd and aggrandising claims of Russian advances”, the ISW said in a daily briefing.

Kyiv’s forces recently seized full control over Svyatohirsk, northwest of Lyman, in the days after Putin had claimed Russia controlled the village.

In a video posted on Monday, the commander of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps Andrii Biletskyi taunted Putin over his recent claim that Russian forces had captured it. Standing in the picturesque monastery town, he declared it was a "rear area for our corps”.

Russian milbloggers have been “increasingly expressing frustration about Russian officials' false claims of advance”, adding that such false military reports “create operational risks for Russian forces” because they cannot call for offensive operations in locations they have already claimed to control.

The alleged lies make it as far as the White House, the ISW added.

Putin and US president Donald Trump held a phone call on Monday, following a visit by Washington envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Kyiv and Moscow over the weekend in a fresh attempt to find common ground for a peace agreement.

The Russian president likely used the phone call to push his misrepresentation of the battlefield situation on Trump, the ISW said.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin gave an “objective and extensive analysis of the current developments in the special military operation”, the latter phrase being Moscow’s euphemism for its aggression in Ukraine.

“Putin likely used the call with Trump to present his distorted picture of the frontline in an attempt to convince Trump that the US should force Ukraine to capitulate to Russia’s demands ostensibly before Ukraine’s battlefield situation worsens,” the ISW assessed.