Putin Is in Trouble
A leaked European intelligence report—and Ukraine’s real leverage.
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Garry Kasparov is the founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
Uriel Epshtein is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
Things aren’t looking great for Vladimir Putin. The war in Ukraine isn’t going well. He’s afraid of coups and drone strikes. It’s not even safe for his personal chefs and photographers to ride the Moscow Metro.
The Russian dictator is apparently confining himself for extended periods in various bunkers.
This is all according to a leaked European intelligence dossier whose contents were reported by CNN and other outlets earlier today.
It’s not exactly the news that anyone, least of all Putin, expected to read when Russia launched its “three-day special military operation”!
(You might be asking: Were the Russians seriously expecting Ukraine to just absorb a genocidal war? And the answer is apparently, yes—that’s what happens when a dictator surrounds himself with sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear.)
Is Putin actually sheltering in the führerbunker? Eh. Who can say?
Instead of debating rumors and leaks, let’s focus on what we know for certain:
First, the Ukrainian military has the capacity to threaten the Russian aggressors on Russian soil.
In one operation, Ukrainian drones shut down all four of Moscow’s international airports.
A few days ago, another drone struck a swanky Moscow neighborhood home to Kremlin elites.
And in recent months, unmanned aerial vehicles have been inflicting punishing strikes on oil facilities in Russia. These Ukrainian operations are the only thing preventing the Kremlin from taking full advantage of the spike in oil prices amid Donald Trump’s war in Iran. These refineries are also facilities owned by Russian businessmen who are not happy that Putin put their assets in the line of fire.
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Uriel has witnessed Ukraine’s impressive UAV capabilities firsthand. Just six weeks back, our organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, led a delegation to Ukraine, where the group met with the deputy commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, an entrepreneur who built the country’s most effective drone unit while working out of a garage.
Some of the UAVs in Kyiv’s arsenal cost as little as $1,000 to produce, while dishing out billions in damage to Russian infrastructure—and yielding the most priceless victory of all, shattering Russians’ sense of imperial invincibility.
Victory Day—the regime’s most flamboyant display of martial prowess—is just 96 hours away. Back in the USSR, a seemingly endless cascade of Red Army soldiers, armor, and artillery would stream past the Kremlin walls every May 9. Since coming to power nearly three decades ago, Putin has made the parade a centerpiece of a propaganda campaign that leans hard on Soviet nostalgia.
Last year, Russia had to rein in the festivities due to Ukraine’s success in penetrating the Russian capital’s defenses. This year, the tanks and the missiles will be conspicuously absent—no need to roll high-profile military targets out into the open. Indeed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he won’t rule out hitting Red Square.
A responsible leader would probably cancel the event altogether. Putin won’t—doing so would mean conceding military defeat. He knows that when Russia loses a war, the regime comes down too: remember 1905, 1917, and 1989.
So Putin is stuck: He can’t win the war. He can’t end the war. In the meantime, the grumbling among Russia’s once-loyal military bloggers will only grow louder. Things that would once earn a long prison sentence are now said on Russian social media with increasing candor.
Here’s another thing we can say with confidence: The excuses for not supporting Ukraine don’t hold up.
In last year’s infamous Oval Office showdown, Donald Trump told Zelenskyy that the Ukrainians “don’t have the cards.” That’s clearly been disproven through Ukraine’s ability to reach deep into the heart of the Russian Federation (and the fact that it is the Trump administration that now turns to Kyiv for help with fighting Iran).
It looks like Ukraine still has some cards to play after all.
As Ukraine presses the advantage, the excuses will change. We’ll hear more of the tired slander that Ukraine doesn’t want peace. To the contrary, peace remains very much possible. But peace will only come when Ukraine wins, Russia loses, and Putin falls.
My Ukrainian grandmother's curse upon him.
May you be rich. May you be so rich that you have ten houses.
And in every house, ten bedrooms.
And in every bedroom, ten beds.
And may you be found dead in every one of them.
May he enter the bunker and never be seen again.