Jason Jay Smart

Putin’s grip on power is collapsing as Ukraine strikes deep into the Russian heartland.
Inside Moscow, the Kremlin’s elite are now waging a silent civil war, a power struggle that threatens the entire regime.

Former FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, once Putin’s ideological twin, has been cast aside. His son Dmitry, now Deputy Prime Minister, faces corruption allegations for moving wartime funds offshore, a sign that even the most loyal insiders no longer trust the system to survive.

Ukraine is using precision strikes to exploit every fracture. Explosions at Bryansk and Saransk have crippled military plants tied to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s network. Fuel shortages now stretch across more than fifty regions, echoing the 1990s collapse.

At the same time, technocrats like Andrei Belousov and Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina are struggling to control a war economy on the brink. Inflation, factory losses, and sanctions have driven Russia toward financial implosion.

This is no longer just a war between armies. It is a war inside the Kremlin itself, between spies, oligarchs, and bureaucrats who no longer believe in Putin’s future. The cracks in Moscow’s power structure are widening faster than they can be repaired.