Vladimir Putin is “fighting for his life” and fears he will be killed if Russia suffers more serious setbacks after the liberation of Kherson, a senior Ukrainian intelligence figure has said.
Oleksiy Arestovich, adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said the surprise capture of Russian-controlled territory has dramatically raised fears in the Kremlin that Ukraine will win the war.
He said, according to The Times: ‘[Putin] He is very afraid because in Russia there is no forgiveness for the tsars who lose wars.
Now he is fighting for his life. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of the Russians, it means the end. The end of him as a political figure. And possibly in the physical sense.
Vladimir Putin meets Dmitry Mazepin today with the Russian leader reportedly ‘in fear for his life’
A municipal worker rips off a pro-Russian billboard after the withdrawal from the Kherson Kremlin
Kherson’s enormous importance to the Kremlin, both because of its link to Russia-annexed Crimea and the Ukrainian port of Odessa, made Putin shamefully miss the loss when he ordered his troops to withdraw last week.
It is Ukraine’s biggest capture in the war and has triggered new Russian attacks and plans for a new offensive from Belarus, Arestovich said.
He added: “This has forced even people who are very loyal to Putin to doubt that they can win this war.”
Arestovich says that Russian troops will mount an offensive from Belarus to Donbas and will also try to reclaim the Rivne nuclear plant.
Russian attacks have already hit the region and one of the plant’s four units was taken offline last week.
Arestovich believes that the attacks that have halved Ukraine’s power capacity are a form of ‘blackmail’ to force Ukraine and its allies into talks with the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian army fires a captured Russian T-80 tank at the Russian position in the Donetsk region.
Putin would demand the occupied regions of Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk, which he would qualify as a victory for the Russians, the adviser says.
But their citizens may not be so impressed with the territorial gains, and the Russians are already expressing their discontent over the costly war against the despot.
Angry wives and mothers of conscripted men have taunted the leader, saying ‘Are you a man?’ since he refused to meet with them.
The women even claimed that the warmonger has assigned his plainclothes surveillance spies to them to monitor his campaign to get their relatives out of the war zone.
The Russian leader will soon meet with the mothers of the mobilized troops, but protesting relatives say the Kremlin will hand-select them in a choreographed session with no hard questions about the fate of its “cannon fodder” men.
In a defiant video, mother Olga Tsukanova, 46, from Samara, whose 20-year-old son goes missing after being mobilized, demanded: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]Are you a man or what?
Ukrainian firefighters work today in the maternity ward of a damaged hospital in Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia region
In a sign of growing opposition to his war and rumors of a new round of mobilization, the courageous activist, head of the Council of Mothers and Wives, asked: ‘Do you have the courage to look us in the eye, openly, in a meeting with women? Who weren’t handpicked for you…?
‘Women who are not in your pocket, but real mothers who have traveled here from different cities on their own, to meet you?
We are here, in Moscow, and we are ready to meet you. We await a response from you.
‘Are you going to keep hiding from us?’
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has already said that Putin, 70, will not meet with these women but with those who believe in his war.
The council accused Putin’s commanders of issuing “criminal orders” putting the lives of their relatives at risk.
Viktoria Usmanova from Tomsk holds a banner reading: “Putin, invite the women of the Council of Wives and Mothers to the meeting on November 27. We are the mothers!”
Tsukanova claimed that the lack of women in the Kremlin and Putin’s power structures was the cause of the war crisis engulfing Russia and Ukraine.
‘We have men in the Ministry of Defense, in the Military Prosecutor’s Office, in the Presidential Administration, they are all men, including [you] – the president,’ she said.
‘And the mothers are on the other side of the dividing line.
‘Well, are you all going to come out and talk or are you just going to hide?’
The women had called for a ’round table’ session with Putin officials on the treatment of the mobilized men.
It later emerged that the women had been subjected to Soviet-style spying.
In another video, Tsukanova said: ‘This is how they respond to us to contact us [Putin’s] government…
Relatives of those mobilized from the Vladimir region, who were sent to the front lines near Svatovo without proper equipment and training, turned to Putin and asked him to “take action.”
‘Since early in the morning we are running from the pursuers, while they openly follow us.
‘Instead of responding to the women’s call, they sent some people from the power structures to follow us activists.
“I think this is an attempt to disrupt the event or put pressure on us.”
‘We are making it public.
‘If something bad happens, know that this is who we contact in the power system: the Interior Ministry, the Presidential Office, the Defense Ministry, the Military Prosecutors, the Human Rights Envoy.
This is where we’ve been.
The United States has estimated that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or maimed in the war.
There are increasing reports of the poor conditions facing the more than 300,000 mobilized by Putin, with little training, poor weapons, inadequate clothing and absent commanders.
Peskov said that a meeting with some mothers had been arranged.
But the former Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers was not invited either, said Valentina Melnikova, 76, director of this renowned human rights organization.
She told Verstka: ‘We were not invited.
‘If they invite us, we’ll think about it.
‘What should we talk to Putin about? We are a peacekeeping organization.
Kremlin sources indicate that they can establish their own loyal and ‘patriotic’ group of mothers and wives who will not criticize Putin.
The council wants untrained recruits withdrawn from Ukraine and neighboring regions.
Putin had promised that they would not go to the front, but this promise has been broken.
They asked: ‘Why has it become a crime to tell the truth in our country?
‘The army is not discredited by those who talk about the real state of affairs, but by those who give criminal orders, who release war criminals without trial or investigation, who dump recruits under artillery fire.’
