Time is running out for Vladimir Putin: his troops are losing the war in Ukraine and the knives are out in Moscow.
His own pro-war hardliners are furious at Russia’s humiliation on the Ukraine battlefield, ordinary people are scared their loved ones will be drafted and Western officials who once thought Putin would rule into the 2030s now count his reign in “months or years”.
General Sir Richard Barrons, a former joint forces chief, told The Sun: “We are clearly looking at the end of the Putin regime because this war has been such a cluster.
“Even three months ago, Putin looked unassailable. Now he looks indecisive and vulnerable.
“The one thing he can’t do is stop. The one thing he has to do is admit he has failed. He is in a bind.”
In a sign of the despot’s desperation, he last week threatened for the umpteenth time to unleash nuclear weapons to defend the biggest illegal land-grab since the end of the Second World War.
US President Biden warned that the world must take the threats seriously because Russia’s military is “significantly underperforming”.
Putin, like a cornered rat, is approaching his most dangerous.
But even his threats of doomsday weapons are unlikely to turn the tide in his favour.
The US and the West have said in public and private that any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a “decisive response”.
If Putin rolls the doomsday dice, he risks the Mutually Assured Destruction — MAD — that comes with retaliatory nuclear strikes.
If he uses smaller, so-called tactical nuclear weapons that cause localised devastation it would trigger international revulsion and only harden the West and Ukraine’s resolve to beat him.
Together, the West and Ukraine have already shown they can win.
International revulsion
Ukraine launched a series of lightning advances proving it can reverse Russia’s battlefield gains.
When the history of the war is written, the past few weeks will stand out as a turning point.
It started on September 8, with a surprise attack in north eastern Kharkiv that freed more than 4,000 square miles.
Ukraine’s armed forces punched east from the city, freeing the towns of Izyum, Kupyansk and Lyman, road and railway junctions that had been vital Russian logistics hubs.
Russian troops tried to regroup behind the east bank of the Oskil river, but Ukraine’s advance continues.
As they fled, the Russians left tanks, guns and armoured vehicles.
In a panic, Putin ordered the mobilisation of 300,000 reserves and a series of sham referendums to ask residents in occupied areas if they wanted to be part of Russia.
His mobilisation decree sparked widespread anti-war protests at home, more than 2,000 arrests, at least 54 firebomb attacks on mobilisation centres and a mass exodus of fighting-aged men.
For the first time since February 24, when Putin unleashed his bloodbath invasion, the war became real for millions of Russians whose loved ones could be sent to fight.
When last week the vote-at-gunpoint referendums delivered the fake results the Kremlin demanded, Putin pressed on with land grabs.
He formally annexed four provinces — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — at a Kremlin gala followed by a rally in Moscow’s Red Square.
In his speech to a hall full of dignitaries, he accused the West of “Satanism” and the US of setting a nuclear precedent by bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the Second World War and vowed to use “all means necessary” to defend his new lands.
But even as he was sabre-rattling, his troops were in retreat from the very lands he claimed were his.
In a stunning two-fingered riposte to his threats, Ukraine took Lyman, a town in Donetsk province and one of Putin’s primary objectives.
Days later, a second tank assault punched through Russian lines in the province of Kherson.
Ukrainian soldiers charged along the west bank of the Dniepro river threatening to cut off thousands of Russian troops unless they retreated across the four-mile-wide stretch of water.
Their 12-mile advance put Ukraine’s troops in striking distance of Kherson city, the only provincial capital still under Russian control.
America responded to Russia’s annexation by announcing an extra $625 million in military aid, including four more HIMARS long-range rocket launchers, which have been key to hitting supply dumps, bridges and command posts deep behind enemy lines.
The defeats sparked fury in Russia. Top propagandist Margarita Simonyan called for generals to be shot, with reference on state TV to General Dmitry Pavlov, who was killed by firing squad in World War Two.
An MP and former general, Andrei Kartapolov, demanded the Kremlin “stop lying”.
US intelligence said Putin had been challenged by a Kremlin insider in a sign of turmoil.
Kirill Stremousov, a Russian puppet official in occupied Kherson, went further by calling for Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to take his own life.
He said: “Many people say the Minister of Defence, who allowed such a state of affairs, could simply have shot himself as an officer.”
Sources in Moscow suggest Shoigu — who is one of Putin’s inner circle — has been lined up as a fall-guy.
The war has been such a disaster some said he would be relieved to be sacked.
A former defence official told The Guardian: “He would be happy to get sacked now. He wants out of this mess.”
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov reacted to the loss of Lyman by calling for the use of “low-yield nuclear weapons” and lashing out at the General Staff for shielding “incompetent” leaders.
In a message posted on his Telegram channel, the war lord blasted General Aleksandr Lapin, who was in charge of Lyman.
He wrote: “The shame isn’t that Lapin is incompetent, it’s that he’s being shielded from above by the General Staff.
“I would bust him down to a private and send him to the front to cleanse his shame in blood.”
Kadyrov’s rant drew fawning praise from oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, seen in prisons offering convicts freedom if they agree to fight in Ukraine.
Prigozhin sparked rumours he was gunning for the tyrant’s job after releasing videos showing the gun-for-hire on battlefield visits.
Blasting Russia’s top brass, he wrote: “These punks should be shipped to the front barefoot.”
What’s next?
General Barrons insisted: “Russia has already lost this war. The question is how badly and at what cost to Ukraine.”
Russia lost when Putin’s assassins failed to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky in the first hours of the invasion.
General Burrows added: “History will say they lost the war when they launched it because they made such a cock of it. But the war still has many months to run.”
As Russian troops retreat, they will fall back to their own supply lines, making it easier to fight.
Ukraine’s forces will stretch their lines, so it will be harder to advance at pace.
The level of fighting is expected to drop over winter with freezing conditions.
Ukraine will try to wear down Russian troops inside Kherson city, only attacking if conditions are right.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s armed forces are building ten to 20 new brigades ready for a spring offensive.
This article was originally published by The Sun and has been reproduced with permission.
Originally published as Danger as Russian president Vladimir Putin is ‘cornered like a rat’
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