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Vladimir Putin is “fighting for his life” and fears he will be killed if Russia suffers another setback after the liberation of Kherson, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official has claimed.
Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said the shock conquest of Russian-held territory has dramatically increased fears in the Kremlin that Ukraine will win the war.
He said according The times: ‘[Putin] is very afraid because in Russia there is no forgiveness for tsars who lose wars.
He’s fighting for his life now. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of the Russians, that means the end. The end of him as a political figure. And possibly in a physical sense.’
Vladimir Putin meets Dmitry Mazepin today with Russian leader reportedly ‘fearing for his life’
A municipal official tears off a pro-Russian billboard after the Kremlin’s withdrawal from Kherson
Kherson’s immense importance to the Kremlin — both because of its connection to Russian-annexed Crimea and Ukraine’s Odessa port to the west — made it an embarrassing loss to Putin when he ordered his troops to withdraw last week.
It is Ukraine’s biggest conquest of the war and has led to renewed Russian attacks and plans for a new offensive from Belarus, Arestovich said.
He added: “This has made even people who are very loyal to Putin doubt they can win this war.”
Arestovich says Russian troops will launch an offensive from Belarus into the Donbas and also try to claim the Rivne nuclear power plant.
Russian strikes have already hit the region and last week one of the plant’s four units was shut down.
Arestovich believes the strikes 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 tank T-80 at the Russian position in the Donetsk region
Putin would claim the occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, which he would hail as a victory for the Russians, the adviser says.
But its citizens may not be too impressed with the territorial gains, as the Russians were already voicing their displeasure over the costly war against the despot.
Enraged wives and mothers of conscripted men have taunted the leader, saying, “Are you a man?” because he refused to meet them.
The women even claimed that the warmonger had sent his plainclothes security spies on them to oversee their campaign to get their relatives out of the war zone.
The Russian leader will soon meet mothers of mobilized troops, but protesting relatives say they will be handpicked by the Kremlin in a choreographed session without tough questions about the fate of their “cannon fodder” men.
In a defiant video, mother Olga Tsukanova, 46, from Samara, whose son, 20, is lost after being mobilized, demanded: “Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]are you a man or something?’
Ukrainian firefighters are working today on a damaged maternity ward of a hospital in Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia region.
In a sign of growing resistance to his war and rumors of a new round of mobilization, the brave campaigner, head of the Council of Mothers and Women, asked: “Do you have the courage to look us in the eye – openly, meeting women?” that are not specially chosen for you…?
“Women who are not in your pocket, but real mothers who have traveled here at their own expense from different cities to meet you?
“We are here, in Moscow, and we are ready to meet you. We expect an answer from you.
“Will you keep hiding from us?”
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has already said that the 70-year-old Putin will not meet these women, but those who believe in his war.
The council has accused Putin’s commanders of issuing “punishment orders” that endanger the lives of their relatives.
In a defiant video, mother Olga Tsukanova, 46, from Samara, whose son, 20, is lost after being mobilized, demanded: “Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]are you a man or something?’
Viktoria Usmanova from Tomsk holds a poster that reads, “Putin, invite women from the Council of Mothers and Women to the November 27 meeting. We are the mothers!’
Tsukanova claimed that the lack of women in the Kremlin and Putin’s power structures was a root cause of the war crisis that engulfed Russia and Ukraine.
“We have men in the Defense Department, in the military prosecutor’s office, in the presidential administration – they are all men, including [you] – the president,’ she said.
And mothers are on the other side of the divide.
“Well, are you all going out for a dialogue—or are you just going to stay in hiding?”
The women had called for a ’round table’ session with Putin’s officials on the treatment of mobilized men.
It later transpired that the women had been targeted for Soviet-style snooping.
In another video, Tsukanova said, “So this is how they answer us for contact [Putin’s] government…
There are increasing reports of the poor conditions of the more than 300,000 people mobilized by Putin (Photo: Mobilization in Voronezh)
Relatives of the mobilized from the Vladimir region, who had been sent to the front near Svatovo without proper equipment and training, addressed Putin and asked him to ‘take action’
“Since the early morning we have been running from pursuers, while they openly follow us.
“Instead of answering the call of women, they sent some people from the power structures to follow us activists.
“I believe this is an attempt to disrupt the event or put pressure on us.
“We’ll make it public.
“If anything goes wrong, know that this is who we’ve been contacting in the power system: the Interior Ministry, the Presidential Office, the Defense Department, the military prosecutors, the human rights envoy.
“We’ve been here.”
The US estimates that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers were killed or maimed in the war.
There are increasing reports of the poor conditions of the more than 300,000 people mobilized by Putin, with little training, poor weapons, inadequate clothing and absent commanders.
Peskov said a meeting was set up with some of the mothers.
But the long-established Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers was also not invited, said the head of this established human rights organization Valentina Melnikova (76).
She told Verstka, “We weren’t invited.
“If they invite us, we’ll think.
“What should we talk to Putin about? We are a peace organization.’
Kremlin sources indicate that they may form their own loyalist and “patriotic” group of mothers and wives who will not criticize Putin.
The council wants untrained conscripts removed from Ukraine and neighboring regions.
Putin had promised that they would not go to the front lines, but this promise has been broken.
They asked, ‘Why has it become a crime in our country to tell the truth?
“The army is not discredited by those who talk about the real state of affairs, but by those who issue criminal orders, who release war criminals without trial or investigation, who throw conscripts under artillery fire.”