The rapid withdrawal of the Russian army from Kyiv last week made clear the magnitude of its failure, leaving behind the bodies of Russian soldiers and the burnt corpses of hundreds of tanks and other military vehicles. The goal of a knockout blow against Kiev has been abandoned and Russia faces the harshest sanctions ever imposed on a superpower. Was it misinformation by a yes-men executive that led the Russian leader down this path? This was supported by the American and European intelligence services last week, saying that the Kremlin leader is now angry with his advisers, especially the military leadership that brought him to this chaos. “His top advisers are very afraid to tell him the truth,” said Kate Bedingfield, communications director at the White House. The Kremlin response was predictable. “Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon seem to know what is really going on in the Kremlin,” said Dmitry Peshkov, a Kremlin spokesman. “They just do not understand what is happening. They do not understand President Putin. They do not understand the decision-making mechanism. “They do not understand how we work.” Few people can claim to be doing this at this point. “As far as I know, the circle Putin is talking to is very small,” said Farida Rustamova, a freelance Russian journalist who has reported on the mood among officials since the start of the war. “Only a few people are allowed to see him in person and they have to be at a distance. And only a few have telephone access with it. “But that approach is only one way, as Putin communicates with them, not the other way around.” Every week, Putin makes a video call to his Security Council, a group of mostly hardliners and technocrats who have become war ministers since the invasion of Ukraine. Among them are the siloviki, the security chiefs appearing in a pole position for Putin’s ear. They include Nikolai Patrushev, the former KGB officer with whom Putin met in Leningrad in the 1970s, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov, whom Putin has also known for four decades, technocratic Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Sergei Naryshkin, head of Putin’s foreign intelligence service. Vladimir Putin is chairing a cabinet meeting in March via video link. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev / AP Their suspicion of the West and their propensity for conspiracy theories make them natural allies of the Russian president at war. But even they appeared to be safely under Putin’s thumb during a televised meeting days before the invasion, a piece of political theater that left Naryshkin stuttering as Putin beat him to “speak clearly.” “It is clear that this is an extremely centralized system that was only assembled during the war,” said Vladimir Gelman, a Russian professor of politics at the University of Helsinki. “The Kremlin is like the solar system, with Putin being the sun and all the planets orbiting it differently. “At the Security Council meeting, it. Was really indicative of how little influence the board members had.” Aside from these meetings, which almost always take place behind closed doors, insiders say you wait until he contacts you. That includes the government’s financial bloc, including Prime Minister Mikhail Misustin and Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiulina, Rustamova said. It will also include Shoigu and Army Chief Valery Gerasimov. The two men disappeared from the public eye for almost two weeks last month, sparking rumors that the defense chiefs had already been punished for the chaotic start of the war by Russia. In an extremely disturbing incident, the Ministry of Defense was forced to admit that it had sent conscripts on combat missions after some had been arrested and killed in Ukraine. Putin had previously denied that there were any conscripts fighting in Ukraine at all. However, despite indications that Putin was angry with Shoigu, analysts warned that he was unlikely to fire the defense chief amid a major military operation. “[Shoigu] “It has become absolutely necessary and so it is back,” said Andrei Soldatov, a writer who has written extensively on Russian security services. “Who could replace him?” He is the third or second most popular politician in the country. “ The Russian leader values loyalty and, therefore, his cabinet, after two decades in power, is filled with loyalists. “Putin likes to repeat the phrase ‘there is no one else to do the job,’” said Tatiana Stanovagya, founder of the political analysis firm R.Politik. “Shoigu is his person. Has… failures at work, shortcomings, mistakes. But will anyone else do a better job? “Therefore, I would not draw conclusions about how Putin tore his hair, about how Shoigu betrayed and disappointed him.” Critics have cited the reported arrests of several high-ranking FSB officers and the dismissal of a senior general in Rosgvardia or the National Guard as evidence of a growing split in the war or a possible crackdown on its poor execution. However, experts said the Kremlin’s ranks largely maintained, with few visible changes among Putin’s advisers, as it seeks to consolidate its support under heavy pressure from the West. “I think so [Putin’s] “Dissatisfied with the performance,” Soldatov said. “But that does not mean that the people inside are ready for a coup or something like that. That’s just a pious desire. “ Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is one of Vladimir Putin’s most loyal advisers. Photo: Press Service of the Russian Ministry of Defense / EPA Seeking leverage with the Kremlin, Western countries have imposed sanctions on oligarchs believed to be loyal to Putin, betting they can listen to billionaire stockbrokers. Among those affected by the UK sanctions is Roman Abramovich, the billionaire former Chelsea owner who unexpectedly appeared in informal talks in Istanbul and Kyiv last month, where he and two other members of the group were arrested. But the oligarchs themselves claim that it has been years since they had the ear of the Kremlin, which had long been coerced by former KGB hawks and other loyalists whom Putin had installed over the past 20 years. “It does not make sense for people like me to try to talk to the Kremlin,” an oligarch who has known Putin since the 1990s told the Observer. Let us not be naive. We have not had access for years. “ Business leaders said they remained in the dark about the invasion until it began, when Putin summoned many of them to a meeting to demand their allegiance. “This conflict has obviously not been discussed with the business community,” the oligarch said. “We were just told the day after the invasion that everything would be fine, but that there was no choice. It is not a discussion or a debate. The system has evolved over the years. Of course there were different blocs in the beginning, but after the Crimea it became clear that there was no place for the so-called liberal wing. And the pandemic made the leaders more isolated. “ Some of these former liberal advisers have already left the country. Anatoly Tsubais, the head of privatization under Boris Yeltsin, who had become a state-backed executive and then Putin’s environmental adviser, resigned and left Russia for Turkey last month. Arkady Dvorkovich, a former Kremlin economic adviser, resigned as head of the Skolkovo Foundation under state pressure after criticizing the war in an interview. Roman Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea FC, who is subject to sanctions in the United Kingdom, is attending talks between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul in March. Photo: AP And Alexei Kudrin, another top liberal adviser who has known Putin for decades, also advised him to abandon the invasion, Rustamova said. According to her sources, Kudrin spoke with Putin shortly after the start of the war. During the conversation, he “warned Putin of the consequences of the war: that the economy would slip back into the early 1990s and that this could lead to social instability.” But there was no reaction from Putin to all this. “Putin has the same answer to all those who are worried about this war – Russia had no choice.” “There is a general view that even if one could reach him, it would not matter, that his mind is focused,” Rustamova said. All of this subverts the idea that Putin has been misled about the scale of the war – he has probably chosen not to listen anymore. The physical rivalry between Putin’s advisers and even the hardliners also means that they would probably like to point out the mistakes of others. “It is impossible to hide everything,” Stanovaya said. “We know there is serious competition within the security services. So if the military is wrong, we know there are a lot of people ready to report about it, from [Chechnya head] Ramzan Kadyrov on the FSB. So I would not say that Putin is misinformed now. But it is possible he will receive his information late. “ As the war continued, this factionalism only became stronger. Kadyrov, the dictatorial leader of Chechnya who has clashed with Russia’s security services, has also been highly critical of the talks led by Kremlin adviser Vladimir Medinsky. After Medinsky announced that Russia would withdraw some forces from Kyiv, Kadyrov said that “Medinsky made a mistake, he made a wrong statement … And if you think that [Putin] it will stop what started exactly as it is presented to us today, that is not true “. “Factionalism has always been a feature of the Russian political system,” said Ben Noble, an associate professor of Russian politics at University College London. “However, since this is an invasion that goes wrong, these factional divisions may have an existential …
