Vladimir Putin was on Wednesday reported to be beginning a witch-hunt inside his own inner circle to find “guilty men” behind the failure of his war strategy in Ukraine.
Sources claimed that the Russian president is “incandescent” that the US and Britain have managed to discover details of his military plans which have been passed onto the Ukrainians.
This is seen in part as the reason why leading generals – of whom it is reported at least five have already been killed in the fighting - and forces have been targeted so effectively in Ukraine.
Mr Putin is also said to be even growing wary of his close ally and holiday friend Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, who is in overall charge of the invasion.
His public appearances have been significantly curtailed in the past week, while his younger daughter Ksenia, 31, was seen posing in Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow.
Sources say Putin has also been dismissive in private of long-time ally Alexander Bortnikov, FSB security service head, and started snapping in meetings at Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff.
Bortnikov has been spoken of as a stand-in leader should Putin fall in a coup.
Another reported target of Putin’s fury is Igor Kostyukov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed forces, who may face imminent removal as part of a wider purge.
Earlier ahead of the invasion he publicly humiliated SVR foreign intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin.
Yet Putin is reportedly more concerned with losses of military hardware - for which he has blamed Gerasimov - than more battlefield casualties.
A toll of 50,000 would be “nothing compared to the goals that will be achieved after the victory”, he is said to have told his commanders.
Some believe he is planning for a deal he will sell as a Ukrainian “surrender” and a “victory parade” in Moscow in early May.
“He is incandescent that US and UK intelligence appear to know the Russian army’s next moves all the time, starting with predicting the invasion before he was ready to acknowledge it,” said one source.
Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov said military counterintelligence is probing an FSB security service department.
“That could mean’ that, finally, people in Moscow started asking themselves why the US intelligence was so accurate,” he told The New Yorker.
“Military counterintelligence is mostly about mole-hunting, identifying the sources of leaks.
“So it looks like now Putin is getting angry, not only with bad intelligence and the bad performance in Ukraine but also about the sourcing of the US intelligence about the invasion, and why US intelligence was so good before the invasion, and why the Americans knew so many things about what was coming.”
The claims about Mr Putin’s discontent – which cannot be verified – came amid continuing signs that Russia’s invasion is faltering, at least temporarily, in the face of the continued fierce Ukrainian resistance.
In a sign of some troops becoming demoralised, Ukraine’s armed forces reported that 300 Russian troops had “refused to comply with orders to carry out combat” and had instead left an area of fighting in the Sumy region.
Ukraine’s minister for internal affairs, Denys Monastyrsky added that Russians were defecting with military equipment and tanks, after realising they were being used as "cannon fodder".
The Ukrainian armed forces also claimed in an update today that Russia was recruiting former soldiers to make up for its losses – which are estimated at around 10,000 soldiers dead – and that Russian forces "in particular directions were demoralised".
The claims about Russia and its war effort came as the around 100,000 people remained trapped in the southern city of Mariupol, which for now remains the Kremlin’s principal target.
Justin Bronk from the Royal United Services Institute defence and security think tank in London, said it appeared that this objective, and the opposition it was facing elsewhere, was leading the Russians to reshape their war effort.
"The Russians have quite visibly failed to take the whole of Ukraine across multiple positions of advance," he told the BBC. "So now they are trying to pull their resources back and consolidate them and concentrate them on one push at a time - in particular around Mariupol and the south."
He added that if the Russians succeeded in Mariupol then its next step might be to target parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region not yet in its control and then Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv.
