Disappointment reigns among Russia’s top officials and businessmen after the war, which began almost a year ago, turned from a “three-day blitzkrieg” into a bloody “car massacre,” writes The Moscow Times.

Russian elites are increasingly concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “gone mad”, writes Bloomberg with reference to European intelligence services.

Despite the failures at the front and the unprecedented wave of sanctions, Putin cannot abandon the idea of ​​defeating Ukraine, for which he is ready to mobilize hundreds of thousands of recruits, sacrifice the economy and accept huge losses at the front.

While elites are increasingly suspicious of Putin, “most of them lack the courage to take real steps to change the situation,” Bloomberg reported, citing Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.

The document, provided by Estonia, says there is no sign of groups with democratic values ​​emerging in a potential post-Putin Russia.

Putin is “having fun”

On the contrary, the pro-war camps represented, for example, by the head of Wagner’s mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin or the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, are gaining strength.

In fact, the “Soviet Union 2.0” is forming in Russia, and “neither Yeltsin nor Gorbachev is visible on the horizon,” according to Estonian intelligence analysts.

Putin is “playing with time”, counting on the fact that the West and Ukraine will give in to Russia, and the bombing will force Kyiv to finally sit down at the negotiating table on the Kremlin’s terms, Bloomberg notes.

And although Western sanctions and arms deliveries to Ukraine caught the architects of the Russian invasion by surprise, the Kremlin does not want to back down, and the authorities retain the opportunity to use the mechanisms of “propaganda imperialism,” the report says.

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