Cracks in the Kremlin over Ukraine? Has Russia reached "breaking point" over Putin's war?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is so misinformed about the state of the war in Ukraine, and misled by his own top officials, that cracks may be appearing in his regime, some experts have begun to speculate.

This week, President Joe Biden said Putin “cannot remain in power”, setting off global speculation about possible U.S. support for regime change in Moscow. The White House insisted that Biden was merely expressing his personal, “moral outrage”.

Putin now faces a growing risk of being ousted in a coup led by his own security services, an exiled Russian human rights activist, Vladimir Osechkin, told Univision. Osechkin says documents and letters he has received from unnamed sources within Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), suggest unrest is growing within Russia’s security forces.

“All they care about is keeping the system in order. For 20 years Putin created stability in Russia and they benefited from that – a lot,” Osechkin said in a phone interview from France, where he heads the Gulagu.net website.

“The FSB officers, the military, everyone who was part of his corrupt system of government, they were able to have a life of luxury. Now they are looking around and they are worried what they see,” he added.

The war in Ukraine has destabilized Putin's power structure

Osechkin was arrested in Russia for his work exposing corruption as well as abuse in Russia's prisons. A former businessman, he spent four years in jail himself after denouncing how Putin allowed the FSB - and his clique of oligarchs - to take over major state-run enterprises or private businesses, often after the owners were jailed or killed. He fled to France in 2015.

But now they worry about the high cost of Putin’s war in Ukraine, especially the sanctions that makes it difficult for them to travel abroad.

"Their wives can’t take their kids to Disneyland in Paris. No more expensive shopping trips to Paris or Milan. That hurts them,” he said.

"They don't want to change the system, they want to change the man (Putin)," Osechkin added. "The stability they enjoyed under Putin has gone. Russia's economy has been crippled and the value of the Russian ruble has plummeted. The FSB agents don't want to go back to the days of the Soviet Union."

It’s not clear how high up or well-connected Osechkin’s sources are, but their reports appear to coincide with what U.S. and British intelligence chiefs are saying.

"Persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership," the White House says

More than five weeks after Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine, U.S. and British intelligence officials have repeatedly claimed military action has stalled because by poor logistics, strategic errors and fiercer than expected resistance from the Ukrainians.

The White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield said Thursday the U.S. had information that Putin "felt misled by the Russian military" and this had resulted in "persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership".

As a result of his invasion of Ukraine, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said this week: " President Putin is not the force he used to be. He is now a man in a cage he built himself.”

Osechkin said his sources paint a picture of Kremlin insiders looking over their shoulders, fearful of who is going to me made the fall guy and take the blame. “They are all going in to see Putin and pointing the finger at the other guy. Putin is listening but he’s indecisive. The longer he waits the more nervous everyone is getting,” he said.

Sources reveal fear of notorious Russian 'kompromat'

“They have the ‘kompromat’ for the businessmen and generals who stole money,” he said, referring to the Russian word for “compromising material” that could implicate them in crimes. “If they do anything to hurt the Kremlin they take out the ‘Kompromat.’ That’s how the system works,” he added.

Osechkin says the documents from his sources reveal a culture of fear. “Now they are methodically blaming us (FSB). We are being reprimanded for our analysis,” one writes. Putin “lives in a closed universe”, afraid to let state ministers near him, he goes on.

Some never believed Putin was serious about going to war, believing it was all part of an effort to cover up holes in the budget and missing funds. “We understood that such a war would be a trap for us,” the source writes.

Osechkin says one ‘whistleblower’ inside the FSB has told him a purge of those responsible for the Ukraine disaster has begun, with some generals reportedly are being relieved of command and top intelligence officers placed under house arrest.

Among those is apparent arrest of General Roman Gavrilov, the deputy chief of Putin's National Guard on charges of leaking classified information. News of his arrest by the FSB was reported by the investigative news website, Bellingcat.

A wealthy Russian investor in the United States has even announced a $1 million reward if Putin is arrested.

“Although it is still very premature to be talking about palace coups or the like, as the security apparatus begins to consume itself with the hunt for scapegoats and 'traitors' then this raises an inevitable challenge for a regime which increasingly depends solely on repression,” according to Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services, writing recently in The Spectator, a London-based political magazine.

Who protects Putin? The 'Musketeers and the 'Beast from the East'

To be sure, this may all be wishful thinking, given the extraordinary security apparatus Putin enjoys behind the high walls of the Kremlin – and every time he steps outside.

Putin is protected by a hi-tech armored limousine, almost 22-feet in length, bigger and heavier than Biden’s presidential car, a customized Cadillac, known as ‘The Beast’.

Dubbed the ‘The Beast from the East,’ Putin’s car a bullet-and bomb-proof Aurus Senat Kortezh, manufactured by Porsche and the Russian state institute NAMI, is supposedly armed rocket-propelled grenades and has a powerful twin-turbocharged 4.4-litre V-8 engine in order to be able to accelerate out of danger.

Putin’s bodyguards — who call themselves his ‘Musketeers’ — comprise a special unit within Russia’s Federal Protective Service, or FSO, according to the website ‘Beyond Russia’, which is run by TV-Novosti, a state-funded media company.

It is rare anyone gets close to him. In 2018, one bodyguard was recorded intervening when mixed martial artist Conor McGregor put his arm around Putin’s shoulders as they posed for cameras at the World Cup in Moscow.

Due to the stress of the job, Putin’s bodyguards are retired early at age 35, unlike the U.S. where the Secret Service can stay on until 50.

Putin makes sure they are well taken care of. They are often rewarded with powerful new posts as regional governors, federal ministers, special services commanders and presidential administrators, according to Russian media reports.

A 2018 expose by Russia’s independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) also revealed how a poultry plant outside Moscow was confiscated and land put in the hands of officers in the FSO.

Osechkin says the documents from his sources predict Putin’s entire system will comes crashing down in a matter of weeks. "This is Putin's last year," says Osechkin.

“Soon everything will change," one of his sources writes. "I'm even afraid to think how and when exactly - it's just that we have entered a state of impossibility. We have reached the classic breaking point within the country," the letter adds.