The Russian journalist and writer Anna Nemtsova, the American correspondent for The Daily Beast, said that during two decades of continuous coverage of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, she has not seen the Russian leadership living in chaos and confusion, as it is experiencing at the present time.
Nemtsova was martyred article The Washington Post reported to her a number of recent incidents and operations, such as the mysterious drone attack on the Kremlin, the car bomb explosion that injured one of the main defenders of the Russian attack on Ukraine, and the downing of 4 Russian military aircraft in one day within Russia’s borders.
Everything is exposed
She said that if the Ukrainians and their allies wanted to destabilize the Russian leadership, let them continue with such operations, adding that these days, Kremlin observers do not have to read fortune-telling or decipher encrypted phrases from the leadership to discover signs of a conspiracy, because everything is out in the open, thanks to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Mercenaries. The Wagner Group, which is close to Putin.
She referred to one of the videos in which Prigozhin stood in front of the Russian dead in a field, insulting the Russian military leadership, and demanding punishment for Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as well as Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, both of whom are close to Putin, and blames them for neglecting supplies for his forces, which prompted It caused “tens of thousands of Wagner dead and wounded.”
Undermining the morale of the Russians
The Ukrainians are happy, she said, and are doing everything they can to undermine morale and exacerbate divisions among their enemies, such that they are constantly publicizing their plans for a counteroffensive in the spring, though good planners do not usually declare their intentions quite openly.
And the Ukrainians did just that last year, she noted, spending weeks suggesting they were preparing an attack somewhere in the southeast of the country only to launch a stunningly successful attack somewhere else.
Russian leaders are afraid
She also said that it is no wonder that Russian leaders are afraid. Earlier this month, as Russia prepared to commemorate the Soviet Union’s 1945 victory over Nazi Germany, an official made a revealing gaffe. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of a region not far from the border with Ukraine, announced that he had canceled the usual Victory Day parade because he did not want to “provoke the enemy with a large number of equipment and military personnel in the city center”.
Nemtsova went on to say that Russian political insiders were increasingly questioning the rationale for the war. Senator Lyudmila Narusova, the widow of Putin’s political mentor Anatoly Sobchak, recently voiced her concerns.
Confusion at the highest levels of leadership
The author commented that if Narusova did not understand Putin’s victory plan, no one would understand it either. She said the sense of confusion present at the highest levels of the Kremlin’s leadership enhances the chances of Kiev’s counterattack succeeding. It now appears that the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Prigozhin’s long-time ally, is severing his ties with the Wagner leader, harshly criticizing his threats to withdraw from the front. As a result, the three main Russian forces in Bakhmut – the Wagner group, Kadyrov’s Chechen militias and the regular army – are openly feuding with each other. With the advancing Ukrainian forces.
She concluded by saying that Putin’s former speechwriter, Abbas Glimov, revealed to her that the Kremlin is “trembling,” adding that Kiev has every right to congratulate itself on the effectiveness of its psychological warfare against Putin’s regime.