Infighting Erupts as Putin’s War Recoils on the Kremlin

(MOSCOW) – The war Vladimir Putin launched against Ukraine is recoiling on the Kremlin itself, as stalled frontline advances, shrinking oil leverage, elite infighting and a looming succession crisis expose a deeper rot at the heart of the Russian state. Measured against Napoleon’s march toward Moscow, Alexander the Great’s campaign pace or the Desert Storm offensive, Russia’s advance in Ukraine now resembles exhaustion rather than conquest. In March, Moscow’s forces seized roughly 5.46 square kilometres, or 2.1 square miles. Napoleon moved 150 times faster, Alexander the Great 360 times faster and the Desert Storm coalition 760 times faster than Russian troops are managing in the Donbas.

Inside Moscow, a fierce political battle is unfolding among the dictator’s inner circle. Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff and a former prime minister, is manoeuvring to control the candidate list for September’s parliamentary elections to the Duma. He favours nominees who are technically veterans but who spent little or no time at the front. Andrei Belousov, the defence minister, insists on fielding genuine combat veterans, arguing that they represent Putin’s vaunted “heroes for our time.”

Kiriyenko’s camp regards Belousov’s stance as reckless. Veterans, once lionised as living saints, could refuse party discipline once inside parliament. Suppressing them thereafter would be politically catastrophic. Belousov sees advantage in championing their cause, earning loyalty from a constituency that increasingly doubts the regime’s nationalist credentials.

The infighting echoes the rhetoric of the late Wagner Group chief Prigozhin. Accusations of false patriotism are flying. Kiriyenko’s people accuse Belousov’s faction of not being real patriots. That tone, familiar from Prigozhin’s mutinous final months, signals how brittle Kremlin unity has become.

Putin’s own ratings are slipping. His personal approval stands below 67 per cent, while support for the ruling United Russia party has fallen to 27.3 per cent. In Russia’s tightly managed political system, criticising officials carries little risk; criticising Putin crosses a red line. Analysts therefore treat the party figure as a more honest barometer of public sentiment. Winning the next Duma elections with such numbers will be difficult.

Beyond Ukraine, Moscow’s imperial leverage is eroding. Kazakhstan, once a pliant neighbour, is accelerating its drift away from Moscow. Astana had been sending about 43,000 barrels of oil per day via Russia to Germany, worth roughly 4.6 million US dollars daily, based on an approximate price of 107 US dollars per barrel. Putin has now decided to block Kazakh oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline.

The decision is designed to remind Central Asia of Russian power, yet it is accelerating the very decoupling Moscow claims to fear. Kazakhstan is building a different country. A few years ago, an ethnic Russian from Kazakhstan, a fluent Kazakh speaker, told this correspondent that he had learned the Turkic-rooted state language in school like everyone else: speaking only Russian was no longer sufficient for employment.

Historical memory reinforces the drift. In 1916, imperial Russian forces crushed a Kazakh and Kyrgyz uprising against wartime conscription in an event known as the Urkun. An estimated 270,000 Central Asians died. Kyrgyz losses alone reached between 100,000 and 270,000, roughly 40 percent of the global Kyrgyz population at the time. That legacy colours attitudes today. When Moscow weaponises pipeline access, it only deepens the sentiment that Russia is not a friend but an adversary. Tension in Central Asia benefits Ukraine by stretching Russian resources across an even wider arc of territory, from the west to Siberia and beyond.

Putin, largely checked out from day-to-day governance, encourages infighting among senior officials. He believes it lets him manipulate them and then pose as peacemaker. Yet the war he imagined would restore Russian might is consuming it. The country is burning men, equipment, money and authority for negligible battlefield gains. The attrition strategy meant to break Ukraine is instead breaking Putin’s own system. The fight over who really controls the levers of power, and who might succeed the ageing dictator, is no longer a crisis. It is already a catastrophe.