According to a new bombshell report, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies in the Kremlin are losing confidence in the leader.
Reportedly, they are having internal discussions about who will replace him.
Citing several sources close to Putin’s regime, Russian-American news website Meduza says insiders in the Kremlin have already drawn up a list of potential replacements for Putin, including Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, the president’s deputy chief of staff Sergei Kirienko, and former President Dmitry Medvedev.
Meduza’s unnamed source said, “It’s not about them wanting to prepare a plot and overthrow Putin right now. But there is an understanding, or a desire, that in the fairly foreseeable future, he will not run the county.”
However, its sources say that Putin will not step down unless his health worsens.
Recently, Kirienko has been in constant communication with the Russian president about the economy and the hotly contested Donbas region of Ukraine. He is widely considered a key member of Putin’s “inner circle.”
The talk of leadership change comes amidst unconfirmed yet persistent rumors that Vladimir Putin has terminal cancer and a plethora of other serious illnesses.
Dissatisfaction growing
Another unnamed source told Meduza that three months after Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the country’s oligarchs and moneyed elites are increasingly dissatisfied.
Five consecutive rounds of sanctions have hit them, and another set to begin.
“Almost no one is happy with Putin,” according to the source. “[The business community] and many government members are unhappy that the president started the war without considering the scale of the sanctions.”
According to Meduza’s report, the hope is now that whichever leader eventually succeeds Putin will be able “to undo all he had wrought” with the West and Ukraine.
Meduza reported that Kremlin bureaucrats are “mildly pessimistic” and do not see how Putin’s regime could end the Ukraine invasion but maintain Russian prestige
Since the attack on Ukraine on February 24, Putin has managed to “set everyone against himself,” including those who want the invasion to carry on and those who want peace.
Pro-war “hawks” consider the slow pace the war is proceeding with and are unhappy and looking for more definitive actions.
According to one of Meduza’s sources, “They believe that since we’re already in [the war] — we cannot show weakness. We must act more harshly.”
The source continued, “Russia may reinstate the draft and fight “until victory” and that the goal is “ideally the capture of Kyiv,” Ukraine’s capital.
