ANDROPOV IS DEAD:

Amid the rosy public assessments in Moscow, there's been only hints of criticism and dissent about the war in Russia. That's due mainly to the fact that Russian authorities have censored any honest press coverage within Russia, forcing independent media and social networks to shut down, and even going so far as to ban the use of the word "war" or "invasion."

On March 11, however, a report by another well-sourced Russian journalist said that the head of the FSB's Fifth Service and his deputy had been arrested and suspected of embezzling funds earmarked for Ukraine operations.

The report by Andrei Soldatov said they were also accused of knowingly feeding bad information about the political situation in Ukraine.

"I see by the quality of the analytics that is available in Russia today, by the way it assesses its place in the world, how it assesses its relations with neighbors, how it assesses the ongoing processes-- it's all very far from reality," Mykhaylo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukraine's president, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

"In principle, they do not have a real picture of what is happening in the world, including in Ukraine," he said.

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