President Putin is making low-level tactical decisions that would normally be decided by an officer in charge of as few as 700 Russian troops, western military sources say.

A military source said that Putin and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, were dictating basic movements of their forces in Ukraine.

“We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision-making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier”, the source said…

A second military source said that in the Russian military, a colonel or brigadier would normally command the equivalent of two battalion tactical groups (BTGs), each comprising approximately 900 personnel. However, the source said that the Russian BTGs had been “battered” and that “if Putin is doing the job of a brigade commander . . . he could be delving into a force that could be as small as 700 to 1,000 soldiers”.

He compared the situation to the founder of Amazon: “Jeff Bezos doesn’t deliver your parcels, he makes strategy decisions.”