Tyrant ‘micro-managing army’

VLADIMIR Putin is making low-level tactical decisions in an echo of the demise of Nazi Germany, Western military sources say.

The Russian president is said to be dictating basic movements which would usually be decided by officers commanding just 700 troops.

His most senior general, Valery Gerasimov, is making the orders alongside him. They are ‘involved in tactical decision-making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier’, a source told The Times.

During the Second World War Adolf Hitler insisted on being consulted on the minutiae of his troops’ movements. Historians believe it contributed to Germany’s failed invasion of Russia and ultimately the collapse of the Nazi forces.