The United States believes that russian president Vladimir putin is being “misinformed” about how badly the russian military is working in Ukraine and about the impact of sanctions on russia’s economy.

This was reported by CNN with reference to an American official.

“We believe that advisers are misinforming putin about how badly the russian military is working and how sanctions are crippling the russian economy because they are too afraid to tell him the truth,” the US official said.

The channel’s source noted that the assessment is based on declassified findings of US intelligence.

According to him, the United States has information that Putin became aware of misinformation, which led to a split between him and senior officials of the russian Defense Ministry.

“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military. Now there is a steady tension between Putin and … (Russian Defense Ministry) stemming from Putin’s distrust of the Defense Ministry leadership,” the US official said.

The official noted that Putin did not really know that the Defense Ministry was “using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, which demonstrates a clear failure to provide accurate information to the Russian president.”

Unian