assumptions and mistakes that russia is making stems in large part from the political system russia has put in place and that is a political system where power is totally concentrated in the hands of one man, vladimir putin. it is that personalization of power that has led to these faulty assumptions and mistakes on the kremlin side. it's highly likely that the kremlin was fed from their intelligence community over the optimistic assessment of russia's military capabilities, they underestimated the ukrainians' will. and i think the kremlin understood this war would be highly unpopular with russians so they wanted to win it quickly, keep it out of the eyes of the russian public. so what happened is russia is fighting a war that it didn't train for and they are now really struggling to adapt to the reality on the ground. so i would say this is very much an intelligence failure for the russian side in large part because putin surrounds himself