TWO more of Vladimir Putin’s top military chiefs have been killed after personally charging to the battlefield to rescue their stalled invasion.
As well as sniping General Andrei Sukhovetsky, it was tonight revealed Ukrainian soldiers have also picked off a Kremlin regional and a divisional commander.
Western officials believe Russian top brass are exposing themselves on the frontline to spearhead drained and untrained rank-and-file troops.
One said: “That’s an indication of some degree of frustration and some degree of lack of progress – and they’re trying to impose their personality on the battlefield and putting themselves at personal risk.”
They said Putin’s commanders have been knocked for six and suffered a “psychological impact” by the “ferocity of the fighting”.
Ukraine scored a major win after shooting down an lyushin Il-76warplane capable of carrying dozens of infantry.
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And the 40-mile death convoy snaking towards Kyiv has hardly moved an inch because Zelenskyy’s troops have blown up bridges and attacked it.
The Western official said: “You’ve got now in effect an enormously large traffic jam with some vehicles that have been damaged or destroyed.”
Despite flexing his military muscles for years, Putin’s full-scale invasion is far “beyond the scale of that which they have trained for”.
Allies are gobsmacked that after nine days of fighting Russia continues to “reinforce failure” and is still beset by logisital blunders.
The official said: “They underestimated Ukraine resistance significantly and that they have had a range of challenges in the execution of the plan, all of which we knew were fragilities in the Russian government system.”
But they have somehow managed to have all of these fragilities play out simultaneously, which has led to the lack of progress.”
Yet they warned Kremlin war generals are now changing tactics by unleashing hellish firepower on Ukrainian cities at grave civilian costs.
