Vladimir Putin’s leadership is “already being questioned” by his colleagues in the Kremlin, the Russian President’s former speechwriter tells the Daily Express.
Abbas Gallyamov, who worked for Putin from 2008-2012, said the Ukrainian incursion could seriously undermine Putin’s authority.
He said: “The process of questioning Putin’s leadership is already on the go and failure in Kursk will definitely speed up the process.
“The more Ukrainians are present on the Russian soil – the stronger and deeper the process goes.
“To drive them out Putin needs fresh troops which he obviously doesn’t have, so to do this he has to withdraw some of those which are already deployed in Donbass, but that means that his pressure there would become weaker. He hates this choice.”
He added: “As a true fanatic he cares more about what he wants to get than about what he has to preserve.
“Obtaining is more important for him. But for the society it’s different. They care much less about obtaining and want to preserve. An awful contradiction.”
Ukraine took control of a number of settlements in Kursk with their surprise attack last week.
Putin vowed to “kick out the enemy”, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that his troops are still advancing in Russian territory.
He said: “We continue to advance further in the Kursk region from one to two km in various areas since the start of the day.”
Zelensky added: “Now all of us in Ukraine should act as unitedly and efficiently as we did in the first weeks and months of this war, when Ukraine took the initiative and began to turn the situation to the benefit of our state.
“Now we have done the exact same thing – we have proven once again that we, Ukrainians, are capable of achieving our goals in any situation – capable of defending our interests and our independence.”
Kyiv’s forces attacked a second border region in western Russia, according to the Russian governor of the territory.
The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladko, said the situation is “extremely difficult and tense” and that the Russians have suffered casualties there.