Putin ‘walks troops into wood chipper’ as Russia recovers from Kursk ‘humiliation’ | World | News

Vladimir Putin continues to “throw soldiers into the wood chipper” as the audacious Kursk operation in Ukraine constitutes a “humiliation” for the Russian president, former US national security adviser John Bolton has said.

Mr Bolton was speaking after a surprise raid by Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops on August 6 saw Ukraine seize large swathes of Russian territory, leaving Putin furious.

The Ukrainian military said yesterday it had used high-precision glide bombs supplied by the United States to carry out strikes in Russia’s Kursk region, while claiming to have recaptured part of the territory in the eastern Kharkiv region, where Russia launched an offensive in the spring.

And Mr Bolton, speaking at a webinar hosted by the Foreign Press Association, said the events of recent days were a “humiliation” for the Kremlin and Putin himself.

In response to a question from 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 any worse in its military performance, and that’s what it’s doing.

“What happened in this invasion of Russian territory is that the Ukrainians clearly saw a weak point, or a series of weak points, and took full advantage of it.”

The situation was similar to when Ukraine expelled Russian forces from the territory of northern Ukraine captured at the beginning of the war after Putin’s invasion on February 24, 2022, Bolton stressed.

He explained: “The Ukrainians noticed that their positions were understaffed because the troops had been moved to Donbass, and in a very short time they pushed the Russians back from all their positions in northern Ukraine that they had taken following the initial invasion.

“I think the impact on the Russian military has been very damaging. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said two years ago that Putin was sending his military into a wood chipper, and that’s what they’ve continued to do.”

Mr Bolton stressed: “I think it shows that all the efforts that Russia has made to overcome corruption and to try to build a truly modern army over the last 20 years have been ineffective.

“It is difficult to explain the inadequacy of their performance other than to conclude that their units were not really up to the standards they wanted. They were not ready for combat.

“Maybe a battalion of 500 men actually had 300, but they said there were 500 to get the pay, rations and equipment that the commander could then use or sell.

“This is how corruption undermines the capabilities of an army.”

He continued: “Certainly the Russians have not accomplished what they hoped to, and they are fortunate to be holding on, in a certain sense, and at a terrible human cost.

“We don’t really know what the Russian losses are. We don’t know what the Ukrainian losses are either, but they are heavy and the Ukrainians have also suffered many civilian casualties.

“But so far the war has been very costly for the Russians, without major territorial gains.”

Ukrainian forces gained new momentum this month after delayed U.S. arms deliveries were finally unblocked.

Citing health officials, the official Tass news agency said four of the injured were hospitalized and another person remained missing.