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U.S. says Putin being misled, as Ukraine refugee tally hits 4 million

A day after negotiations showed some progress, Russian officials gave conflicting statements and fighting continued

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Updated March 30, 2022 at 10:16 p.m. EDT|Published March 30, 2022 at 7:11 p.m. EDT
Ukrainian refugees wait on a bus after crossing the border with Poland on March 30. More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled the country in the past five weeks to escape the war, according to the United Nations. (Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images)
10 min

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers are shielding him from how badly the invasion of Ukraine is going, top U.S. officials said Wednesday, as the conflict raged on despite peace talks and the number of Ukrainians who have fled their country topped 4 million.

Putin’s advisers may be afraid to deliver bad news to a leader who has been willing to take increasingly extreme measures against people who dissent within the Russian system, U.S. intelligence officials said. One worrisome consequence, Pentagon officials said, was that negotiations underway between Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly five-week-old invasion could be undermined by misinformed expectations and directives from the Russian side.