Vladimir Putin is continuing to “feed soldiers into the wood chipper” with Ukraine’s audacious Kursk operation amounting to a “humiliation” for the Russian President, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton has said.
Mr Bolton was speaking after a surprise incursion by Volodymyr Zelensky’s soldiers on August 6 saw Ukraine seize large chunks of Russian territory, leaving Putin furious.
Ukraine’s military yesterday said it used high-precision glide bombs provided by the United States to carry out strikes in Russia’s Kursk region while also claiming to have recaptured some territory in the eastern region of Kharkiv, where Russia launched an offensive in the spring.
And Mr Bolton, speaking during a webinar organised by the Foreign Press Association, said the events of the last few days amounted to a “humiliation” for the Kremlin and Putin himself.
In answer to a question by Express.co.uk, Mr Bolton, who spent 18 months working alongside then-President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019, said: “You think Russia can’t get worse in its military performance, and it does what.
“What happened in this invasion into Russian territory is that the Ukrainians obviously saw a weak point, or a series of weak points, and took full advantage of it.”
The situation was similar to one in which Ukraine had expelled Russian forces from northern Ukrainian territory seized in the early part of the war after Putin’s invasion of February 24, 2022, Mr Bolton pointed out.
He explained: “The Ukrainians noticed their positions were undermanned because the troops had been shifted to the Donbas, and in very short order, they pushed the Russians out of all their positions in northern Ukraine that they had taken in the aftermath of the initial invasion.
“The effect on the Russian military, I think, has been very detrimental. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said probably two years ago now, that Putin was feeding his army into a wood chipper, and that’s what they’ve continued to do.”
Mr Bolton emphasised: “I think it shows that all of the Russian efforts to overcome corruption, to try and build a really modern army for 20 years now have proven ineffective.
“It’s hard to explain the inadequacy of their performance other than by concluding that their units really had not come up to the standards they wanted. They weren’t combat ready.
“Maybe a battalion of 500 men actually had 300 men in it, but they were saying they were 500 to get the salaries and the rations and the equipment that the commander could then use or sell.
“That’s how corruption undercuts a military’s capability.”
He continued: “Certainly the Russians have not achieved anything like what they expected, and they’re lucky to be hanging on, in some sense, and at a terrible human cost.
“We don’t know really, what Russian casualties are. We don’t know what Ukrainian casualties are, for that matter, but they’ve been heavy, and the Ukrainians have also suffered a lot of civilian casualties.
“But it’s been a very costly war for the Russians so far, without a lot of territorial gain to speak of.”
Ukraine‘s forces have gained new momentum this month after delayed deliveries of US weaponry were finally released.
Kyiv’s shock offensive coincided with the intensification of its drone war against military and fuel targets which sparked blazes deep in Russia this week.
New details yesterday emerged about damage and injuries caused by some of those attacks.
A Ukrainian drone attack targeting a distant Russian air base in its Volgograd region caused significant damage to an airfield that reportedly housed glide bombs used by Moscow in the war.
Citing health officials, state news agency Tass said that four of the injured have been hospitalised and one other person remained unaccounted for.