< As Russia launches a new offensive, what did it learn from the first one?

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

One key thing to remember about Russian leader Vladimir Putin is that he's a former intelligence officer. He's invested heavily in Russia's current network of spies. Yet Russia underestimated the resistance it would face in Ukraine, and Russia's intelligence community is now facing the fallout from a war that's gone very badly.

NPR's Greg Myre joins us with more. Hi, Greg.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

SHAPIRO: What are people in the U.S. intelligence community saying about what's going on with their Russian counterparts?

MYRE: Well, I want to start with a conversation I had with Dan Hoffman. He's a former CIA officer who served multiple tours in Russia. And he says Russia is always unpredictable, and this war has repeatedly left him stumped.

DAN HOFFMAN: My imagination was never good enough, ever, in spite of all the intelligence I read, in spite of the fact that I speak fluent Russian and I listen to the news and I talk to intelligence officers, lots of sources - in spite of all that, I am continuously amazed. Would anybody have imagined that the Russian soldiers would have bedded down in Chernobyl's forest and radiated themselves? No - well, yes. OK. I couldn't imagine that, but I get it. It's what they do.

MYRE: So he said given Russia's moves, which have been very aggressive and very erratic, he says we should be very wary about predicting what comes next.

SHAPIRO: OK - so lots of unknown. But let's talk about something we have seen in Europe. What's happening to suspected Russian intelligence officers in other European countries?

MYRE: They're getting kicked out of Russian embassies in huge numbers. More than 20 European countries have expelled somewhere around 400 suspected Russian intelligence officers who were posing as diplomats. Poland, for example, booted out 45.

Now, the Russians are known for having large numbers of intelligence officers at their embassies. And in normal times, there's an expulsion here, an expulsion there when an intelligence officer gets caught spying by the host country. But Russia's invasion prompted these large-scale expulsions in a pretty coordinated way. And it's too early to tell, but this could lead to long-term scaling back of diplomatic operations between the West and Russia.

SHAPIRO: And within Russia, intelligence officers aren't faring so well either. What's happening there?

MYRE: No, not at all. You know, just a couple of days before the war, Putin really humiliated one of his security chiefs in a TV broadcast. Putin was seated at one end of a large Kremlin room, and he asked this official about the situation in Ukraine. And when he stumbled, Putin said, speak plainly, and then treated him like a school kid who gave the wrong answer - even told him to take his seat. There have also been media reports that a senior intelligence official responsible for Ukraine is under either house arrest or is jailed. There's no official announcement, but it's been widely reported. Again, here's Dan Hoffman.

HOFFMAN: It's consistent with the way that Vladimir Putin and his predecessors would treat their own inner circle. And it's a dangerous game to be a Russian senior military officer or senior intelligence officer. One day, you're in the favor of the czar, and the next day, you're in jail.

SHAPIRO: Well, is Russia's intelligence assessment likely to improve as the country appears to be starting a new military offensive?

MYRE: Well, we'll see. Putin has certainly scaled back his aims, at least in the short term. He's cut his losses around Kyiv in the north. He's focused on the east and the south, and these are areas more favorable to Russia. And a senior U.S. defense official said just today that Russia is putting more troops and tanks and helicopters in place in the east. It seems it's trying to avoid the overly optimistic predictions it made in the first offensive.

SHAPIRO: NPR's Greg Myre, thank you.

MYRE: My pleasure.

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