Eight takeaways from The Times investigation into Putin's war in Ukraine

Secret Russian battle plans, intercepts and interviews with Russian soldiers and Kremlin confidants have revealed new details about how Vladimir Putin botched its invasion of Ukraine.

A team of New York Times reporters investigated one of the central questions of the war in Ukraine: why Russia did she miss her invasion so badly?

The story - based on secret battle plans, interceptions and interviews with Russian soldiers and confidants of the Kremlin - offers new insights into the mindset of President Vladimir V. Putin, the resounding failures of his military, and American efforts to prevent a direct attack. war with Russia.

Here are eight takeaways from the report.

Joined by telephone in Russian hospitals , wounded soldiers described being sent to war with little food, training, bullets or equipment – ​​and looking at around two-thirds of their platoon are killed. Materials recovered from the battlefields indicate the army's unpreparedness: a map from the 1960s, an impression from Wikipedia of how to use a sniper rifle, an extremely optimistic timetable for the invasion of Russia . In interviews, one soldier recalled asking how to use his rifle just before going into battle, while another described how his supervisor revealed they were going to war: "Tomorrow you go Ukraine to fuck the shit up."

Many of those closest to Mr. Putin fueled his suspicions, amplifying his grievances against the West. A former confidant likened the dynamic to the radicalization spiral of a social media algorithm: "They read his mood and they start slipping this stuff into him." Mr. Putin planned the invasion in such secrecy that even Dmitry S. Peskov, his spokesman, said in an interview that he only heard about it once it had started. Anton Vaino, Mr. Putin's chief of staff, and Aleksei Gromov, Mr. Putin's powerful media adviser, also said they didn't know in advance, according to people who spoke to them.< /p>

The United States tried to stop Ukraine from killing a top Russian general. US officials discovered that General Valery Gerasimov was planning a trip to the front lines, but hid the information from Ukrainians, fearing that an attempt on his life could lead to a war between the United States and Russia. Ukrainians learned about the trip anyway. After internal debate, Washington took the extraordinary step of asking Ukraine to call off an attack – only to be told the Ukrainians had already launched it. Dozens of Russian soldiers were reportedly killed. General Gerasimov was not one of them.

A senior Russian official told C.I.A. director William J. Burns last month that Russia would not give up, no matter how many of its soldiers were killed or wounded. A NATO member is warning his allies that Mr Putin could accept the death or injury of as many as 300,000 Russian soldiers, around three times his estimated losses so far. Before the war, when Mr. Burns warned Russia not to invade Ukraine, another senior Russian official said that the Russian military was strong enough to stand up to even the Americans.

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Days after the invasion...