Matthew Sussex

And I think, you know, whereas in Iran, that tells us more about, you know, you can achieve operational success, but it doesn't necessarily lead to strategic victory, if you're Vladimir Putin.

you're actually very, very much aware and worried about your own personal safety because realistically in Russia, it's all about regime security and Putin's security than anything else.

So we've had this reporting by, you know, so-called leaks from European intelligence services.

I rather suspect that that was done quite deliberately to keep the pressure up on Putin and sort of create this narrative that he's old, he's out of touch.

And he's increasingly weak.

Well, this is why you pause a bit when you read the stories about it.

It was supposedly the former defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, who was expressing disquiet and was identified as a potential coup plotter.

Now, there are quite a number of problems with that because, for one thing, Shoigu's power has been significantly curtailed since he lost the defence ministry and the Russian armed forces don't like him anyway.

And if you are going to launch a coup in a place like Russia, you really need control over three things.

The guns, the jails, and the information.

And Shoigu has control of none of those things.

So I think Shoigu perhaps not, but that doesn't mean necessarily that down the track we mightn't see someone decide to try their luck.

If you remember a few years ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Wagner,

got to within 200 miles of Moscow, all the way from the Ukrainian front.

And something that probably would have upset Putin a lot at that time was that no Russian lay down in front of a Wagner tank to protect Putin.

You know, the sense that this war is Putin's war and it's going bad is something that I think really will continue festering.

No, and you almost get the sense that Trump has given up on trying to solve it.

I think the trouble is that he shot all his ammunition right at the start by trying to bully the country that was invaded and say, well, you don't have the cards, you must sign up to this critical minerals deal, you must take the Russian...

really bad territorial deal because you're losing.

All of that stuff turned out not to be true.