Is Vladimir Putin’s power base collapsing amid a stalled invasion?

There are signs that Vladimir Putin’s inner circle is “crumbling” after the Russian president vowed to “cleanse” Russia of traitors and ordered the arrest of one of his top military commanders.

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James Heappey, the British Armed Forces Minister, said this morning the arrest of General Roman Gavrilov was one Signs of “real discord” about the invasionAccording to the latest US intelligence services, at least 7,000 Russian soldiers were killed, including three generals, and up to 21,000 soldiers were injured.

The “conservative” estimate of the dead and injured indicates the scale of the catastrophe of the Russian invasion. The Telegraph called. It is “greater than the number of American troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in 20 years.”

Military Purge

The heavy casualties suffered by Russian forces have prompted the apparent “purge” of senior military and intelligence commanders, The Telegraph said, including General Gavrilov, the deputy chief of the National Guard, who was arrested on Thursday.

It is unclear why Gavrilov was arrested, Christo Grozev, the lead Russia investigator for investigative journalism organization Bellingcat, tweeted. Sources suggest he was arrested for “leaking military information resulting in loss of life” or “wastefully wasting fuel.”

But “one thing is clear,” continued Grozev’s Twitter thread: “There is no question that Putin recognizes this deep s**t this operation is in it.” He added: “It’s so bad that he changes horses mid-stream – a great taboo in war.”

Over the past weekend, Putin also had Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, head of the FSB’s Fifth Service, and his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh arrested, reportedly on intelligence oversights.

“It looks like after two weeks of war, Putin finally dawned on him that he was completely misled,” said Washington-based Russian investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei soldatov Center for European Policy Analysis. His closest advisers, “fearing his answers, appear to have told Putin what he wanted to hear.”

banking crisis

In a further blow, the “highly respected” head of Russia’s central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has resigned after reportedly “fighting back against Putin” over the war in Ukraine and the “devastation of Russians by Western sanctions,” she said daily mirror.

Nabiullina’s resignation also signals a “deepening crisis” for the Russian economy, the newspaper said. Taken together, the resignations and arrests suggest that “various officials are challenging Putin as Western sanctions begin to take hold.”

Russia’s economy expected to ‘shrink by 8%’ this year, while inflation hits 20% as Russia collapses under economic backlash from its invasion.” Reuters reported.

This result would eclipse the subsequent 2014 “slump in oil prices”. Putin’s annexation of Crimea. The oil price crash was enough to plunge “the economy into crisis” when combined with “Western sanctions and a rush of investors from Russian assets.”

Isolated dictator

While Putin’s invasion falters and Economists fear what is to comeThe Russian leader appears to have “cast his baleful gaze on Russians who oppose the invasion or are sympathetic to the West,” he said NBC News.

In a “scathing” speech to the Russian people that has recently “surprised and alarmed many who study Putin,” he appeared to anger Russian elites who had fled the country, branding them “national traitors,” added the broadcaster.

“The West will try to rely on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors, on those who make money here with us but live there,” he said. “I don’t mean ‘live’ even in the geographical sense of the word, but according to their thoughts, their slavish consciousness.

“Such people who are mentally there by nature and not here are not with our people, not with Russia,” Putin said, adding that such people “cannot live without oysters and gender freedom.”

He also called for “a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society” that would “strengthen our country, our solidarity and our cohesion”.

It seems that Putin, who normally had a high level of support among the Russian public, is now “a Intimidation strategy to keep the Russians on the side“, called CNN. His reference to “national traitors” was “terrifying” in “a country where mass political repression and the Gulag system are still remembered”.

The speech reflected the Russian leader’s isolation, Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the broadcaster: “What we saw when the war started and what we have seen since – including last night’s speech – is truly the product of a man whose whole world is inside his head,” said Braw.

“It’s kind of a humiliation for a country that is seeing McDonald’s closing now that Russians are flocking to IKEA to get all the available items before leaving the country,” she added. “This is humbling and of course quite frightening given the possible reaction of the Russian public when these consumer goods are no longer available.”

General Sir Richard Lawson Barrons, a retired British Army officer, said so i news Page that Putin invaded Ukraine “because of his own hubris” and because “his own particular narrative” was “reinforced by the facts that people gave him because they thought he wanted to hear them.”

He added: “There is a transformation from reporting the facts as they are to creating a narrative that they know Putin and his inner circle want to hear. So they reinforced this false narrative.

“It’s an example of someone who has been in power for a very long time and has become the source of all meaningful decisions and people are really afraid of that.”

https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/956143/is-vladimir-putin-power-collapsing-stalled-invasion Is Vladimir Putin’s power base collapsing amid a stalled invasion?