Putin is determined to 'burn down Ukraine's house,' former CIA operative says.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin is now determined to ruthlessly crush Ukrainian resistance no matter what the cost to his country, and the Ukrainians fighting Russian forces are “all going to die,” says a former CIA station chief in Moscow.
In an interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast, Daniel Hoffman — for years, one of the CIA’s top experts on Russia — said the Russian president is “not the Vladimir Putin I was tracking back in the day at the CIA. He’s a different guy.” He says that Putin has dug himself into such a deep hole with the Ukraine invasion that he now no longer believes he has any choice but to level the country.
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SNIP (What follows is an excerpt from this grim but well-informed interview.)
"...I think Ukraine’s darkest days are ahead of them, tragically. I will tell you that this isn’t the Vladimir Putin I was tracking back in the day at CIA. He’s a different guy. He won a lot of wars — a brutal war in Chechnya. He invaded Georgia in 2008, but didn’t try to take Tbilisi. He invaded Ukraine in ’14 and annexed Crimea, and invaded the Donbas, and kind of settled on a frozen conflict there.
All those things were Vladimir Putin playing chess with limited but achievable objectives. This one, Vladimir Putin has altered his risk calculus. He’s playing poker where he might not have the strongest hand. But I am deeply fearful we’re going to see something like Grozny or Aleppo, where Russia goes scorched earth, because they have failed, utterly failed, thus far."
More: https://news.yahoo.com/putin-is-determined-to-burn-down-ukraines-house-former-cia-operative-says-141203665.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr
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He failed in the initial invasion and now the only way to show superiority is to destroy a country and its people.
