"struggling to explain"
"officials and analysts are asking themselves similar questions"
"For weeks, officials in Washington have discussed why the Russian military has not been more aggressive"
"why Russia hasn’t hit back harder against the West."
" American and allied officials have debated why Mr. Putin hasn’t tried widespread or more damaging cyberstrikes"
In the beginning, Western intel services seemed to know what Putin was thinking and saying in real time; predicted accurately what he would do and when.
Now we are speculating, asking each other questions, discussing, debating, struggling, making predictions that appear to have no basis in hard intelligence.
Have the bugging devices been detected and removed? Has a mole been identified and removed? It is a strange war. There have been pronounced shifts. There has been a pronounced shift in our intelligence, too. Britain and the U.S. were twins, one spoke, the other confirmed; the other spoke, the first confirmed. The U.S. did not second the British defence minister's prediction. We don't know anymore.
