Putin beginning to have excuses made for him: Military expert

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges peeled back the curtain on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military Thursday on "Your World."

RET. LT. GEN. HODGES: For the last four or five years I've listened to experts talk about, … "Putin is this genius, he's so smart. He can play ‘Go’ and chess simultaneously while standing on his head. He's a former KGB agent." Give me a break that he has no idea how corrupt his own ministry is, how corrupt his own government is, and that he doesn't know what's going on. So I think this is the beginning of people trying to make excuses for him, whether they're inside Russia, or maybe they were people who were a little bit too complimentary of him outside of Russia. 

…

This has been a lesson in strategic leadership. I'm sure he's not hearing everything … In this very top-down centralized command structure, I'm sure there are people who are reluctant to tell him bad news or to offer different opinions. And this is also - you made a reference to all the Russian generals who have been killed - the reason they're so exposed is because of the tradition inside Russian military for very centralized decision-making. … [A]s we would have captains and colonels and senior sergeants making decisions at the front where there was a problem, they have to have a general come forward, and then these guys are talking on cell phones, which is amazing to me, and that's why they're getting killed. 

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW BELOW: