Putin faces mounting crises: corruption scandals, record casualties, Iranian setbacks, and a Ukraine that's winning.
Kyiv Post
75
7 دقيقة قراءة
0 مشاهدة
Russia’s terrorist-in-crime, Iran, is getting walloped by the Americans and Israelis and threatens to destroy oil markets and the world economy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oil prices are up, but his customers want safer suppliers in the future, and Europeans roundly rejected Putin’s recent offer to ship oil and gas to them again.
Meanwhile, his genocidal war in Ukraine is failing. Kyiv has missiles that can reach Moscow, a booming weapons industrial complex, and recently regained a large chunk of the occupied territory.
Worse is a credible report publicized by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Putin’s mediocre army of conscripts and corrupt officers had sustained a record 1.3 million casualties since 2022. Of these, 62% were killed, and the rest were wounded.
Not surprisingly, Russian polls reveal concern about their flagging war, but, worse, Ukraine’s incredible drone technology has garnered them an invitation to join the US-Israeli alliance to smash Putin’s Tehran too. To cap off his rotten week, a new scandal surfaced involving corruption by members of his inner circle, along with rumors that a military coup d’etat may occur.
Putin’s “gray cardinal” Vladimir Surkov recently fled the country to avoid being arrested for corrupt practices involving military and other officials. Millions allocated to rebuild occupied territories in Ukraine have vanished. After this news surfaced, Moscow immediately shut down the Internet to stop rumors that suddenly sprang up that another rebellion against Putin was afoot (In June 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Mercenary Group, marched his troops toward Moscow to protest against Russia’s military leaders. It was ultimately aborted after one day before reaching Moscow. Prigozhin then died under suspicious circumstances in a plane crash two months later).
Trump also accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of being reluctant to reach a deal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
A mutiny doesn’t appear to be underway, say credible media sources in Russia, but the Surkov scandal is linked to others. In 2025, a deputy minister of defense, Timur Ivanov, was arrested and charged with accepting “massive bribes” following investigations by deceased anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny activists. Ivanov and his wife lived flamboyantly in Europe during the war as caskets piled up. He was a ranking member of Russia’s elite “siloviki” and is now in prison. His crime also involved skimming millions from Moscow that were intended to rebuild Ukraine’s Mariupol.
The shutdown of the Internet occurred after the arrest on March 11 of another former Deputy Defense Minister, Ruslan Tsalikov. He also worked with Ivanov and for Sergei Shoigu, Minister of Defense, who was fired in 2024. Tsalikov is now the fourth former deputy defense minister to be charged with corruption.
Putin’s week was further rattled by US-Israeli attacks against Iran, which are helping Ukraine by impairing Iran’s missile and drone capabilities that Russia has relied on in its Ukrainian war. Putin is likely also upset that the Europeans overcame an attempt by his Hungarian patsy, Orban, to block €90 billion ($103 billion) in military aid to Ukraine. There’s also news that the Europeans are finally starting to board and impound the “shadow fleet” tankers that deliver Russian oil around the world, interrupting Putin’s cash flow. Finally, reports surfaced that Russia has been sharing weapons and intelligence with Iran to support its attacks against US forces in the region. So much for their superpower detente.
But imagine how upsetting it must be that Ukraine has now positioned itself as a world-class war technology nation. Its drones are unmatched, an expertise honed (let’s face it) by successfully mowing down so many Russians. Kyiv has now joined the effort to defeat Putin’s ally Iran. It’s also capitalizing on its war expertise. On March 10, Saudi Arabia said it was negotiating a “huge deal” to buy Ukrainian weapons because of their superiority. Even Donald Trump’s sons have invested in an American drone manufacturer called Powerus that is acquiring Ukrainian drone companies and/or licensing their technology to build and white-label it in the US for sale around the world. Atop it all, there are rumors of unrest among Putin’s military brass – little wonder, given that their war casualties are the size of Philadelphia’s population.
Zelensky has also ratcheted up his anti-Russian rhetoric and salesmanship by boasting that Ukraine is a technology winner and is winning, not losing, its war against Russia. He’s also boldly stated that Ukraine won’t withdraw from the territory in Donbas, which the Russians have failed to conquer. And he also broadcasts that the wars in Iran and Ukraine are evidence that “Putin has already started World War Three” and that only intense military and economic pressure will stop Russia and Iran.
Undaunted, Putin launched another charm offensive this week in an attempt to counter the facts by claiming that he can bring about a peace deal with Iran, according to the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg. He’s actually offered to mediate between the parties – a skill set he has yet to reveal in the case of his illegal 11-year war against Ukraine.
“The Kremlin is keen to retain good working relations with Trump,” wrote Rosenberg. “It views its ties with the Trump administration as beneficial to Moscow’s war aims in Ukraine. That explains why Putin has been careful not to criticize Trump personally and publicly over the Iran war.”
And vice versa. US President Donald Trump salivates at the thought of all the money to be made in Russia once the shooting stops. Putin dangles lucrative sucker bait as I described recently in Trump’s $14-trillion Swindle. It appears that Trump fell for it again because he didn’t hang up the phone and then repeated Putin’s nonsense. “Putin wants to be helpful,” explained Trump, “and I said, ‘You could be more helpful by getting the Ukraine-Russia war over with. That would be more helpful.”
The only good news for Putin is that Russia will gain from the recent jump in oil prices. But the bad news is that he has lost access to Iranian missiles and drones because their facilities have been destroyed. And when the war ends, oil prices will plummet, and Russia will be poorer. Putin needs to get at least $59 a barrel for oil to finance his military and genocide; sanctions remain (except for India), and he is badly losing to Ukraine. It appears that Putin is getting his comeuppance for the massive losses and economic problems and for allowing corruption among his inner circle so outrageous that it would make a Czar blush.
Putin is a three-dollar bill who soft-soaps and flatters a flawed American president. But at least Russian newspapers go after Trump and his war.
“The ‘peace president’ has simply lost his mind,” wrote the Moskovsky Komsomolets. “The Emperor has no clothes, or rather, no sanity.”
That makes two of them.
Reprinted from [email protected] – Diane Francis on America and the World.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
Diane Francis is an award-winning columnist, bestselling author, investigative journalist, and television commentator. She writes twice weekly at https://dianefrancis.substack.com/ and is Editor at Large with the National Post and Postmedia newspapers writing twice weekly. She is Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Eurasia section, in Washington DC. She has written pieces for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Daily Beast, Politico, Miami Herald and the New York Post. In addition she is a Distinguished Professor at Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Management and has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. In 1991, she became Editor of Canada's Financial Post, the first woman editor of a national daily newspaper in Canada, a position she held until the paper was sold in 1998.
