In human psychology, if you lie to everyone, you will trust no one; if you betray everyone, you will emotionally connect with no one. This is moral equilibrium, or in other words, divine justice, creating inner emptiness, fear, anxiety, or a deep inner void.
God will not send an angel to punish someone who is a pathological liar; instead, God created humans with a conscience. No human can outrun their emptiness or conscience. The very tools you create to punish the innocent come back to haunt you. You will never outrun this emptiness with many distractions.
KGB Putin’s trauma bond with the Soviet Union is coming back to him, from East Germany to the Russian Federation.
Let’s analyse Putin’s psychology now! Watching Russia’s Victory Day parade this weekend. You might think the country is as powerful as it has ever been.
But in fact, this year’s parade was dramatically scaled back from years past. The event, commemorating the country’s World War Two victory over Nazi Germany, is considered a centrepiece of President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
And it usually features a dizzying display of missiles and tanks. But this was the first time since 2007 that that hardware was absent. You see, Russia is in trouble. The Kremlin attributed the scaled-back parade to Ukrainian terrorist activity.
Many observers suggested the change was due to potential drone strikes from Ukraine targeting military hardware during rehearsals. This week, a Ukrainian drone hit a high-rise apartment building in Moscow, about five miles from Red Square, where the parade takes place.
And Ukraine has been stepping up drone and missile strikes deep into Russia’s territory, bringing the war back to the country that started it. Late last month, the Ukrainian drone hit a high-rise in Yekaterinburg, more than 1000 miles from Ukraine.
As Bloomberg notes, the city of 1.5 million people served as a base for industry during World War two because it was then considered too far for attacks from Europe to reach. Ukraine is also using drones to attack Russia’s oil infrastructure, hoping to hurt its export revenues.
As the AP reports, Ukrainian drones have hit the oil refinery and export terminal in the Black Sea city of Odesa four times since April 16th. Residents reported oily black raindrops after the attacks, and oil from the explosions has seeped into the sea. These attacks, and others like them, are forcing more and more Russian people far from the frontlines to grapple with the reality of war.
That is, as the stalemate on the frontline itself continues. The Institute for the Study of War reported that, in April, for the first time in nearly two years, Russia suffered a net territorial loss in Ukraine.
That means that the territory it captured was less than the territory it lost to Ukraine in April. Now, none of this means that a Russian spring and summer offensive won’t happen and won’t eke back gains.
But it suggests the difficulty in securing an outright victory in the war, and a war with no clear end could be a threat to Putin. Walter Russell Mead wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal that an agonising stalemate would threaten Mr Putin’s grip on power and the future of Russia itself.
The Financial Times reports that Putin’s approval ratings have fallen to their lowest level since he announced a partial mobilisation of reservists in September 2022.
European intelligence leaked to CNN and other outlets this month reveals that security around Putin has dramatically increased, amid fears of a potential assassination attempt or coup coming from Russia’s dissatisfied political elite.
The report says that aides close to Putin have had surveillance systems installed in their homes. His cooks, bodyguards and photographers are forbidden from using public transport. Staffers working with him can only use phones without the internet, and he spends much of his time in underground bunkers.
These measures come amid a wave of assassinations of high level Russian military and security figures. In December, a senior Russian general was killed by a car bomb, presumably by Ukrainian agents.
The FT reports that food and security fears have caused the Russian government to crack down on mobile internet in recent months. Rolling mobile internet outages and blocks on social media apps and VPNs may also be aimed at silencing dissent. But if that’s the aim, the measures appear to be backfiring.
Several Russian bloggers and influencers have criticised the Russian government for the crackdowns. Now wrote first by himself, based in Monaco, addressed Putin in a video last month, viewed by about 32 million people.
She said the people are afraid of you. In an essay in this week’s Economist, an anonymous former senior Russian official wrote for the first time since the conflict began, Russians are starting to imagine a future without Putin.
People are also reeling from economic woes. At the same time, Putin’s Russia has benefited from rising oil prices amid the US war in Iran. It’s also dealing with bruising labour shortages, as Ukrainian-born Alexander Collender writes in The Spectator. Though Putin touts Russia’s 2.1 unemployment rate as a sign of a booming economy, it’s really a sign that the country is running out of workers.
Military conscription doesn’t help, but the real culprit is long-standing demographic decline. Of course, Vladimir Putin has time and again proven to be a wily and resilient leader, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that his aggression against Ukraine has cost his country dearly.
Putin says the war may be coming to an end, while the Trump administration says talks are in fact stalled. Is this a real diplomatic opening or mostly just strategic messaging from both sides right now? You know, there’s a lot of confusion, even about predictions.
I mean, you do have to look at what President Trump said. And he said, hopefully this, you know, temporary ceasefire is the beginning of the end. But I think an accent on the word hopefully.
And then, as you pointed out, Secretary Rubio said, things are stalled. And then if you look at what Putin said, I was like to check the bottom line and the fine print. And what he’s saying is, yes, things could be coming to an end.
But he’s saying that when he even said I would be willing to sit down with Vladimir, with Volodymyr Volodymyr Zelensky in a third country, but not to negotiate to sign something that’s already negotiated.
So, in other words, the likelihood of that happening very soon is not very great. So I think things are stalled at this point. And the question is: can they somehow pull this out and reach some agreement? That is a big yes. It’s very interesting. Check the small print.
Both Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of violating the Victory Day ceasefire. Was this truce ever really meant to advance negotiations, do you think? Could it hold longer?
You know, I think it was really a temporary measure at a very delicate moment. I mean, that parade was symbolic in so many ways, especially to Vladimir Putin. And to have, you know, drone attacks by Ukrainians on Moscow would be an utter disaster. So I don’t think you really know it.
President Trump, certainly, who apparently asks both sides. He says it was a request to have some type of cease-fire, to make sure this did not turn into a disaster. But in the long term, no. Immediately, both sides were accusing each other of violating.
And in fact, today, I think the Russians were saying that Ukraine violated it 16,000 times. So that’s kind of where we are at this point. Again, it didn’t really solve much of anything, although you do have to say that the fact that they are going to trade prisoners is a very good thing.
That would be 1000 on each side, and that’s important. Ukraine’s drone strikes are reaching deeper into Russia, as you alluded to, and are forcing ties to security around Moscow.
How significant is that psychological relief for both the Kremlin and for ordinary Russians? I think it’s very important. I mean, if you look at some of the polling and again, it’s very difficult to do polling in the middle of a war, especially in Russia.
But you know, indications are that Russians are really becoming very frustrated with the war. It’s been going on for a long time. There is a lot of inflation. There are economic problems. People are, actually, there are reports of Russians being psychologically affected by this. Depressed and worried about it. And then I think the biggest factor is shutting down the internet in Moscow, which was a very big deal. And a lot of people, including many Russians, were very frustrated. They went and tried to go online at times. They couldn’t even get online.
And that’s an indication of something that I think is pretty deep, this frustration that, yes, the Kremlin is saying we need this for security. But some Russians are saying, no, it goes far beyond that. It’s the Kremlin trying to control everything.
So this is kind of, I’d say, you know, a growing theme. It doesn’t mean that this is going to be a revolution or anything like that. But discontent is growing, and it’s among many different people. Let’s talk a bit more about those Victory Day celebrations, because they were noticeably scaled back this year.
Less military hardware on display, and even reports about Putin potentially wanting Trump to help prevent strikes on Moscow.
What does all of this actually mean? You know, it was used by both sides. I think, again, in a psychological war, the Ukrainians essentially were saying, look, Vladimir Putin, because he was so afraid that Ukrainians would attack Moscow with drones, that he had to run to President Trump and ask for his help to intercede with Zelenskyy. Please don’t fire.
Now, that is the truth I think lies in the middle, that President Trump decided to ask both sides. However, that shook out, and both sides were using. So the Ukrainians are again showing that Putin is weak and scared.
And then, after May 9th, President Putin said in a news conference, “Well, security was one thing, very important to us.” But also, we were definitely prepared if anything came from Ukraine, we were bound to reply.
And in other words, we would fire back, and they would hit kids. And so he said, I told the Chinese, I told the Indians, and I told the Americans that, you know, there are a lot of diplomats who work in Kyiv, and it would be dangerous for them.
So, in other words, Clinton was trying to use it to say, no, no, I’m not scared. I was actually threatening these countries with the possibility of what could happen in Ukraine. So again, you know, the war is very kinetic, as that word is used so much. It’s very bloody and very cruel.
But there’s also this psychological part of it which is really, really important, especially in the context of what we were talking about. The vulnerable ability that Putin has, somewhat at home, due to domestic discontent. It’s a rare, pointed insight into one of the starkest secrets in Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s security protocols.
And it’s a detailed intelligence report given to CNN by a source close to a European intelligence agency that portrays, predictably, a Kremlin in deep crisis, as cooks, bodyguards, and photographers working with Putin must have surveillance systems installed in their homes, it says.
Putin has stopped visiting military sites entirely this year, it says, in contrast to last year, when he often spent time in fortified bunkers and kept clear of some of his main lavish residences, like Val di, a tactic aided by many of his appearances.
And he is in the media a lot, being prerecorded. His staff cannot use smartphones or public transport, the report adds. Visitors must be searched twice. Putin is increasingly isolated. These fears grow. I mean, just how paranoid is he right now? What are you learning?
Well, I think you don’t really have to look very far. Just look at the plans for the Victory Day parade celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II on May 9th.
And on Saturday, it’s going to be the first time the Russian Defence Ministry announced the middle of the night last week, trying to bury the news that in 20 years they’ve done it without the usual tanks and armoured vehicles and ballistic missiles that usually trundle past Putin on Red Square because they’re worried about Ukrainian drone strikes.
Ukraine has really improved its ability to strike deep, deep into the heart of fresh air. They have a luxury high-rise building just earlier today in Moscow, with a drone strike.
And that’s clearly something that Putin is worried about. He’s on two fully fledged public appearances all year. And that is an increasing concern in Russia.
Just today, Putin replaced the head of the aerospace forces, which, among other things, is in charge of air defence. And the suggestion there. We don’t know all the reasons, but they clearly are doing everything they can with air defence in Russia. Ukraine has been very successful in striking Russian energy facilities, both supporting the war and all in Ukraine and also in Russia.
Feel like Russia’s energy exports are funding the war. And that’s something that they really have to be worried about. Yes. And you’re, I mean, you’re all of this is just incredible, that the fact that the cooks and people who work around Putin can’t use smartphones, I mean, what kind of devices are they even using?
They have to be surveilled in their homes, where he himself is spending time in a bunker. Yeah. They joked about Putin ever since the coronavirus, at the peak of the pandemic, when he basically went on lockdown with all but his very, very, very closest intimate circle, and that was where he came up with the whole plan for the Ukraine invasion. You remember those really ludicrous scenes where he was meeting foreign dignitaries at opposite ends of this giant 30-foot-long table. The joke was that he was the older man in the bunker. And really, that’s become true. You talk to people who know him.
They say that he spends the vast majority of his time in these secure facilities micromanaging the war, obsessing over which village Russia may or may not take on a battlefield in Ukraine. And in the coming weeks, he’s becoming increasingly detached from the normal affairs of state.
And you start to see this actually creates some political blowback for him because the economy is not doing very well. Russia has been shut down. Mobile internet is down in Moscow and all across the country, and people are pretty unhappy. Putin screw it for what it’s like ahead.
So the fear and security measures reportedly increased after a Russian general was killed by a car bomb in Moscow. You talked about the drone strikes, which were a car bomb. And apparently, in a heated meeting at the Kremlin, Putin’s top military and security personnel blamed each other.
So it devolved into a finger-pointing exercise. So, you know, what is the stability right now of Putin’s inner circle? I think the real lesson from this reporting in this intelligence report is that Putin doesn’t really have an inner circle anymore, even of the very tight circle of intimates he had over the previous 20, 25 years he’s been in power.
The civilian officials who were told that he was planning the war, most of the oligarchs that he built out of government, his closest friends, with very few exceptions, they’re not really involved in this. They don’t see him very often at all because he’s only released regularly to his media family or when they’re directly involved in planning the war.
And when you see these generals being blown up, you know, I’m like Putin. They don’t have anything like the security Putin has. Many of them were hit with bombs, right, right at their homes, at the front doors of their buildings. And there was a dedicated security agency that was really working on protecting these people.
The Defence Ministry didn’t have one. And so that obviously is going to lead to a lot of squabbling. And that certainly does not make for a cohesive work.
Fascinating what Max is saying at this point. Putin doesn’t even really have an inner circle anymore. Is this all just paranoia, or does Putin have reason, do you think, at this specific moment to be this afraid? No. He’s, of course, paranoid. But fears are real.
If Putin knows from Russian history that there’s one thing that led to massive changes, sometimes revolutions, it’s a bad war. If the war goes well, the Russian public will never care about the price of victory.
Suppose a cost is just irrelevant. But that war’s unwinnable wars led to changes. The Russo-Japanese War at the beginning of the 20th century led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, the bad war of World War I.
So the stalemate led to the collapse of the Roman dynasty. In 1989, the retreat from Afghanistan and basically the failure in the Cold War led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while I may disagree about this. This is the it’s the, inner circle making decisions about the war against Ukraine.
There was a kind of consensus that Russia would easily win, but this war now looks unwinnable. And we can hear it by just reading, you know, just even pro-war bloggers now, they express doubts that Putin can deliver. And that’s, you know, that’s the greatest threat to the Russian dictator.
If people believe he’s weak, weakness is something that always leads, has always led to disaster. So your piece today was titled Putin is in trouble. You’re writing about those military bloggers you’re also talking about? I mean, what is the impact? And Max referenced this.
But to the internet suddenly being shut down to having this big May 9th thing that is usually, you know, massive troops and tanks and all of these things be this, this, this, this small, pared back thing. Yeah. Look, see, as bad wars led to the trouble. Good wars, one war is always created, you know, the special order for the regime. That’s why Putin and the former Soviet leaders always try to capitalise on the World War to achieve victory. So that’s why the main lines parade.
By the way, Russia celebrated May 9th because Stalin didn’t want to do it on May 8th, as the rest of the world considered it a sacred date. This is what made us great. And for Putin to recognise that he should actually not just reduce it. No more tanks. That’s a sign of weakness. But the biggest challenge for him now is that, at the beginning of this full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin, you know, managed it by avoiding, you know, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, other big cities, to be involved. No body bags there.
So he looked for either prisoners or some, you know, depressed regions or some national republics. So big cities like Moscow never felt the heat of the war in the last few months. It’s not just that they know that they have to pay the price. And also many oligarchs, I mean, they have to suffer financial losses because all these know refineries and plants, somebody owns them, right, that are getting hit by the drones. Exactly.
The Ukrainians are very successful almost every day. They just hit 1 or 2 targets. One person at the beginning of the war was very close to Putin, with Sergei Shoigu, a former defence minister. He had his ups and downs, but he’s been a Putin ally. And now, the Intel report that Nick Paton Walsh obtained says that he’s still on the Security Council for Putin. Says that Shoigu is, quote, associated with the risk of a coup. All right. I’m curious about two things.
Do you think that’s the case? And I guess there’s also this: if this comes out, what happens to Sergei Shoigu when Putin sees this report? Look, I think it’s it’s it’s hearsay. It’s these rumours.
But remember, Prigozhin, it’s his, it’s the precautions. Rebellion was also about the war in Ukraine. But at that time, the majority of Russian elites, including the army, supported Putin because they thought the war in Ukraine was too profitable. Right now, it’s a big loss. And again, the war is unwinnable. And the public opinion, of course, is dictatorship.
But it’s public opinion among the Russian elite, both in economic, political, and, of course, military, that is now openly expressing doubts that Putin leads the country. Again, Russian history tells us this is the beginning of the end, a mystery in the Mediterranean, the possible torpedoing of a Russian ship to stop the Kremlin from handing submarine nuclear reactors to North Korea begins in a quiet Spanish port.
This really is the craziest of stories about a Russian shadow fleet ship that sank off the coast here, in the strangest of circumstances, whose Russian captain confessed to investigators that it was carrying two nuclear reactors, possibly for a submarine headed for an unknown destination.
The wreckage of all of which the Russian military spent a huge amount of time and effort destroying instantly is shrouded in silence, but concerns the most serious of issues: weapons proliferation between two nuclear powers and the force being used to stop it.
The Ursa major ship loaded up near Saint Petersburg in early December 2024, on paper bound for Vladivostok with a cargo of two huge cranes and over 100 empty containers, it made another stop loading two large maintenance hole covers. You can see them in blue here, along with two white pill-shaped objects, which will later prove important. It set sail on a shadow fleet ship used by Russia in Syria.
The Portuguese Navy followed it from above. You can see the blue covers here until just before it ran into trouble in Spanish waters. It was way out to sea when the Ursa Major on the 22nd of December, 2024, suddenly slowed; Spanish rescuers noticed and radioed to ask if anything was wrong.
The ship insisted it was fine and could handle the situation, but about 24 hours later, it made a sharp deviation and issued an urgent call for help. The boat was listing; this video shows it being filmed from a nearby tanker, but it probably would not have sunk too fast. The captain of the ship later told investigators he’d seen a 50-centimetre by 50-centimetre hole in the hull, the damaged metal facing inwards.
A source close to the investigation said. The captain said it had been followed by three explosions on the starboard side of the boat, killing two of his crew. So the Russian military arrived in force and told everyone to stay 2 nautical miles away from their ship.
This is a major, but the Spanish know they need to conduct rescue operations, so they send this ship to pick up 14 Russian survivors who are brought back here. And that includes the Russian captain, who, it seems, is starting to help investigators piece together what’s happened. But it’s hours later that day, the mood changes over the Ursa major ship, and the Russian military fires flares over it. And then a series of explosions followed, which Spanish seismic sensors picked up, sending the ship to the seabed.
Moscow demanded their crew back too fast, but it didn’t happen immediately. Spanish rescuers brought the 14 Russian surviving crew to this hotel, and it’s here that the Russian captain started telling investigators key information.
Now there’s been this silence from the Spanish government about this incident. Still, they recently released this statement confirming that the Russian captain confessed to investigators that his ship was carrying two nuclear reactors, probably meant for submarine use.
And he also said he wasn’t sure if those reactors had fuel in them. But there’s no evidence of any contamination. The captain also told investigators he thought he would not stop first at Vladivostok, but instead be told to divert to the North Korean port of Rason, according to the investigation source.
That could explain why the extra cranes were needed to help lift the reactor safely. Russia was in North Korea’s debt at that time. Kim Jong-un had sent troops two months earlier to help Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leaving analysts curious as to what the Kremlin had given him in return. In December 2025, North Korea would claim to have built its first nuclear-powered submarine.
The Spanish investigation surmised a likely reactor would be this, the VMF for SG, shown, and a Russian submarine here on state TV. Its dimensions are not public, but CNN analysis shows reactor vessels match the shape of at least one of the white objects seen in Saint Petersburg’s container port on December 4th, both gone by December 11th when the ship had left. If these reactors were removed from decommissioned submarines, they would be radioactive. Although obviously not as much as if they were fully loaded with you.
How incredibly rare is this kind of transfer of technology? This is quite serious stuff. It is not something that’s undertaken lightly, and it’s only something that’s ever been done between very close allies. So it’s a major move by Moscow. Absolutely. This is very, very troubling. Potentially, yes. Particularly if you’re South Korean, everything has been at the bottom of the sea. But the Russians weren’t done yet.
And according to a source familiar with the investigation, about a week after the incident, a Russian research vessel called the Yamato, linked in the past to all sorts of allegations against Moscow, sat over the wreckage for about five days, and four more explosions followed, possibly by the Russians, destroying what was left of the wreckage in the months after.
The US may have shown interest in the site twice, sending a rare C-130, five hours, constantly, Phoenix, usually secretly sniffing out traces of nuclear activity in Russia’s Arctic or over Iran, along the path of the Ursa major. Weaving low at 5000ft, one had flown a similar route 13 months earlier, perhaps suggesting it’s routine. The aircraft’s US base declined to provide any details, so Spanish lawmakers have urgently sought answers but got few.
Cuando alguien not to dissect Lara maintains Tesla information claramente a tensor de lo q pd por lo menos subjected to continual oper. Supuesto casi like a non dijo case on these O’Connell Marco, guitars of milk of Metro. They performed the ICA la opera as a personal vehicle. Impossible. And don’t say “yo creo la” the Latin “alguien” program, no se, vamos, see hello, all okay lang lang localisation. So why did the ship sink? The Spanish investigation said the initial impact was likely caused by a projectile known as a super-cavitation torpedo. The visor in front of itself can reach very high speeds. Others point to something simpler. The hole in the hull that the captain talked about was half a meter by half a meter.
What could make something like that? From the description you’ve given, that hole to me sounds like a limpet mine. It sounds like a shock, shaped-charge explosive that was placed against the hull by someone or something and detonated.
The Russian owners immediately called the sinking a targeted terrorist attack. The Russian, Spanish, and British militaries did not respond to a request for comment, and the Pentagon declined to. A few Western militaries are operating there and are capable of noticing, tracking, and stopping cargo like this. All sides. It seems happy for this secret to stay on the seafloor.
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