Vladimir Putin appears to know that Russian forces are suffering “heavy losses” in his stalling invasion of Ukraine, Western officials said on Thursday.
They believe that this can be seen by his decision to change military strategy to focus more on trying to capture territory in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
However, his close Kremlin aides are believed to be too scared to tell him the full truth about how badly the invasion is going.
More than 10,000 Russian troops have been killed since the invasion started on February 24, according to some reports.
As Mr Putin moves more forces towards the Donbas, one western official said of what the president is likely to be hearing: “There are signs that there is some movement of troops so there is definitely is some adjustment of the tactics of the invasion.
“So, it looks as if they at least do understand that they are taking heavy losses, they must understand that they have not taken Kyiv, even (in) Russian-speaking towns...the Ukrainians have been strongly resisting.
“That information has to be getting through.”
But that information may not be “totally unvarnished,” the official added.
Sir Jeremy Fleming, director of Britain’s GCHQ spy listening centre, stressed in a speech in Australia on Thursday morning that it is increasingly clear that Mr Putin “massively misjudged” the situation in Ukraine.
“Even though we believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, what’s going on and the extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.” he said.
“It all adds up to the strategic miscalculation that Western leaders warned Putin it would be.
“It’s become his personal war, with the cost being paid by innocent people in Ukraine and, increasingly, by ordinary Russians too.”
Mr Putin, 69, has been in power since 2000 and is the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who died in 1953.
“He has a relatively small group of people around him, they are all pretty similar (men), from pretty similar backgrounds,” said the western official.
“You can see how the echo-chamber around him might very well reinforce his opinions rather than challenge or debate.
“There is definitely a sense of (him) not really understanding the full picture, not really getting the right sources of information.
“So, a huge miscalculation and that has to be that he did not understand to the full extent what he was doing.”
Mr Putin has delivered a series of speeches and wrote a 12,000-word last summer which made clear he does not recognise Ukraine as a sovereign country.
“The fact that President Putin chose to invade has to be an indication that he did not understand that Ukraine is a nation..that Ukrainians feel that they are Ukrainian, that they are not Russian, even those who speak Russian as their mother tongue,” said the official.
“You can see that he did not accept the concept of Ukrainian nationhood.
“Were the people around him saying to him ‘no, this is crazy, this is wrong, Ukraine is a very different country to even five/ten years ago’, I don’t know.
“But he clearly made a massive miscalculation so the information was wrong.”
There is a level of support for the war from the public in Russia, the western officials said, but they believe it will start to diminish as families see more and more soldiers not returning home.
One said: “There will be genuine support but actually this is not a People’s War. This isn’t something that the Russian people wanted, and over time, as news does filter through about losses and casualties and there’s been some horrible footage of young Russian soldiers who lost limbs fighting in this stupid and pointless invasion, that will have an impact on public opinion. And probably the economic hardship as well.
“Of course the Kremlin are trying to blame other people and are trying to say that this is about being anti-Russian... [not] countries being appalled by aggression and the invasion of Ukraine.”
