President Vladimir Putin was misinformed by his advisers regarding Russia’s military’s performance in Ukraine, says a U.S. intelligence.

Intel reported by the New York Times on Wednesday contained comments from officials in the U.S. revealing the miscommunication between Russia’s presidency and the frontline. 

Speaking in Algiers, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged these reports. 

“With regard to President Putin, look, what I can tell you is this, and I said this before, one of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that you don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or who have the ability to speak truth to power,” Mr Blinken said. “And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia.”

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield also said the U.S. believed that “Putin is being misinformed about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.”

The report noted growing friction between Mrs Putin and the Ministry of Defence, including with the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. 

Andrei Soldatov, a Russian security services expert, told the Times that two of Mr Putin’s top intelligence officials had been placed under house arrest. The officials, who run the Fifth Service of Russia’s main intelligence service, the FSB, had been interrogated for providing poor intelligence ahead of the invasion. 

The Russian military has suffered losses since the beginning of the invasion in February. However, due to the strict control over the reporting of the war, these numbers have not been amplified. 

The death of three Russian generals has been confirmed by NATO officials, with one death acknowledged by Mr Putin in a speech. 

They have been identified as Andrei Kolesnikov, Vitaly Gerasimov, first deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army, and Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army.