RIA "Novosti" in the material under the heading "Former CIA analyst: Russia taught the West a lesson that he did not learn" writes :
“Western countries have made a serious mistake by underestimating the capabilities of the Russian economy and military,” former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told YouTube channel Judging Freedom.
“The past year has taught them nothing. Since last March, they have been telling us for a whole year: they say that Russia will run out of missiles from day to day, they won’t pull for so long, and so on, ”the expert noted.
According to him, Western countries sincerely believe and believe that the Russian economy and military are in a terrible state, but recent events on the battlefields in Ukraine show the opposite, and the West is making a mistake by underestimating Moscow.
“For the past three weeks, Russia has been carrying out large-scale missile and bomb strikes, unprecedented since the beginning of the conflict, and successfully hitting targets throughout Ukraine – and Ukrainian air defense can’t oppose anything,” the expert says.
In May, Russia did launch several missile and bomb attacks on Ukrainian cities, but Larry Johnson's assertion that Ukrainian air defense was powerless against them looks extremely strange.
On May 1, 18 Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles were fired; according to the Ukrainian side, 15 of them were shot down . Several buildings in Pavlograd, Dnepropetrovsk region, were damaged. Two people died.
On May 4, in the Kiev region, the Patriot air defense system shot down a Kinzhal missile, which, according to the Russian side, cannot be shot down.
On May 8, Russia carried out one of its largest attacks using missiles, drones and artillery. As a result, one warehouse with Red Cross humanitarian aid in the Odessa region was destroyed; one person died.
On May 9, 25 Caliber, Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles were fired ; shot down 23. In Kyiv and the Dnieper, several buildings were damaged by debris from downed rockets.
On the night of May 14, a warehouse in Ternopil was destroyed by a cruise missile strike, a strong fire broke out. 3 missiles shot down .
On May 16, 6 Kinzhal missiles were launched, as well as 12 Kalibr, Iskander-M and S-400 missiles. All rockets were shot down , in Kiev 3 people were injured from falling debris. The Russian side claimed that they managed to destroy the Patriot air defense system in Kiev; Ukraine and the US reported that she received only minor damage.
On May 18, Russia fired 30 Caliber, Iskander-K, Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles; 29 of them were shot down . One hit an infrastructure facility in the Khmelnytsky region, a fire broke out.
On May 19, out of 6 Caliber missiles, 3 were shot down. Rockets aimed at Kiev were shot down ; in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial facility was damaged.
As you can see, there are very few damages and casualties for such massive attacks. And the fact that S-300 and S-400 missiles, which are designed for air targets and cannot be accurately aimed at ground targets, are used to strike ground targets, suggests that Russia's stock of missiles is not so large.
In another fragment of the same video, Johnson claims that in the capture of Bakhmut, "Wagnerites" numbering 26,000-30,000 defeated a Ukrainian group of more than 100,000 people. Where he got this number from is unknown. In March, Yevgeny Prigozhin estimated the number of defenders of Bakhmut opposing him at 12,000–20,000 people, and the commander of the Akhmat special forces, Apty Alaudinov , at 7,000–10,000. In April, an analyst from the Wagner PMC spoke of a Ukrainian group of up to 80,000 , but for all the doubtfulness of such data, this is still not Johnson's 100,000. True, at the end of March, Life.ru, citing an anonymous source, announced a 200,000-strong group, but this can hardly be taken seriously.
Larry Johnson worked as a CIA analyst until 1993, after which he went into private business. Several times he was accused of spreading fakes; for example, in 2008, during the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, he claimed without any reason that there was a video of Michelle Obama speaking offensively about white Americans. In 2013, Johnson accused then-Secretary of State John Kerry of raping a local woman during the Vietnam War. The audio clip of Kerry's "confession" to the rape turned out to be edited; when this was revealed, Johnson deleted his article titled "John Kerry is a rapist and a liar" but did not apologize. In 2017, Johnson alleged that British intelligence had wiretapped Donald Trump's telephones and passed information to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign; Fox News later had to disavow this statement.