Ukraine takes out Putin’s Chechen hit squad, says it was tipped off by Russian intel agents who have turned against Putin
If Vladimir Putin’s thirty long foot meeting tables are a sign of his increasing paranoia about being taken down from within, it turns out he may in fact have good reason to be paranoid. Ukraine announced today that it’s “eliminated” a Chechen assassination squad that Putin sent to take out Zelensky. This is ugly enough for Putin, given that he apparently sent in his A Team, and Ukraine wiped them out. But it gets worse for Putin.
In wartime, these kinds of claims always have to be taken with a grain of salt, even when they come from the “good guys.” But Ukraine says that it was able to get such a leg up on the Chechen hit squad because members of Russia’s “Federal Security Service” intel agency (basically the former KGB) have turned against Putin and tipped off the Ukrainians that the Chechens were coming.
By all accounts, the Chechens are the most effective and ruthless fighters Putin has at his disposal. If Ukraine was able to wipe out one of the Chechen specialty squads, that’s a huge blow for Putin. But if Russian intel agents are now providing real time info to the Ukrainian government in the hope of taking Putin down, he has a much bigger problem at home.
Putin will have to be looking over his shoulder every minute of the day going forward, because now he’s been told that Russian intel agents have actively turned against him, and he has no idea who they are. Even if this claim ends up not being accurate, just the news of it will drive Putin absolutely bonkers. And if it is accurate, then no length of table is going to keep him safe from the people in his own building who want him gone.
