Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian politician, journalist, and negotiator, serving as the adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Saturday declared that President Vladimir Putin has lost control of his intelligence agencies, UNIAN reported. Podolyak also suggested it was likely Russian law enforcement agencies who are embroiled in an internal war that caused the explosions on the Crimean bridge Saturday morning.
Podolyak made his statements on live TV.
According to TASS, on Saturday morning, a truck exploded on the Crimea Bridge, setting on fire the fuel tanks of a freight train running near its rail part. Three people were killed and two eastbound sections of the bridge’s road part collapsed. A government commission of inquiry chaired by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin was set up after the accident.
Ukrainian Defense Forces Spokesperson Natalya Gumenyuk commented that now the Russians “will not be able to use another transport artery,” in particular, the railway. She added that Ukraine is “quite happy about it.”
According to Zelenskyy’s adviser, the situation in the Russian Federation may well develop into a coup, and military personnel have already been detained in Moscow. He argued that setting up the explosions required a thorough familiarity with the logistics of the bridge’s management, available only to the Russian special services.
In his opinion, this and other processes indicate that the prerequisites for a coup d’état are developing in Russian society, but it’s too early to tell when it would happen. However, it can already be argued that the process of destruction of the power infrastructure, long Putin’s backbone, has begun.
Podolyak noted that the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the head of the mercenary Wagnerites, Yevgeny Prigozhin, formed a coalition against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian General Staff. Putin is therefore in the midst of a stalemate, and it is unknown which of these “camps” he will join. If Putin betrays his generals and Shoigu, then he would hand the army to non-army people, seeding a bloody internal conflict in Russia’s leadership.
Podolyak noted that as the war in Ukraine has turned from a “seven-day” war into a “seven-month” one, people in Putin’s entourage have begun to openly criticize him for the failures at the front. The FSB is trying to attribute the defeat to the General Staff, but it was the FSB that provided the military with primary data on the invasion, with bad information on the resilience of Ukraine’s population.
Podolyak warned that a “criminal revolution” may take place in Russia, as control may ultimately be passed to the underworld, which made money on the supply of weapons to the military and is currently involved in especially dangerous operations. Such a scenario could be particularly dangerous for Putin since the criminals are better than him at lawlessness.
“Everything that’s happening now in Crimea, in particular, indicates that Russia is being drawn into a difficult internal conflict,” Podolyak reiterated. “Many of them will not come out of it, because everyone will face charges from the outside world for every atrocity they commit.”
According to TASS, on Sunday morning traffic between Crimea and mainland Russia started recovering. Motor service is open only for cars so far and only along a single lane in both directions. Freight and passenger rail service has been reopened in full but trains still experience schedule delays.
