![The curtain protecting the dignity of Russia's military has been pulled back](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220912133952-01-izyum-damage-super-tease.jpg)
The curtain protecting the dignity of Russia's military has been pulled back
CNN
The tsar suddenly might have no clothes. It has been a startling week on both sides of the Ukraine and Russia border.
What's left of the curtain protecting the dignity of Russia's military has been pulled back, and it's definitely not the second mightiest in the world.
Russia's withdrawal from around Kharkiv -- a planned "regrouping" that some state media didn't even dare mention -- is arguably more significant than its earlier collapse of positions around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. These units had been dug in for months, defending their positions effectively -- as CNN witnessed during weeks spent along the arterial roads north out of Kharkiv -- and were at times literally minutes drive from the Russian border.
![](/newspic/picid-6252001-20250206034049.jpg)
The CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less in an effort to comply with an executive order to downsize the federal workforce, according to three sources familiar with the matter – a deeply unorthodox move that could potentially expose the identities of those officers to foreign government hackers.