Vladimir Putin is reportedly panicking about a member of his inner circle scheming against him after his Navy Day parade ended in humiliation.
The Russian president is expected to punish officials after the annual parade known for its displays of maritime might was canceled over fears of Ukrainian strikes, only to be replaced by a dramatically scaled-down event that drew widespread mockery. Instead of the usual sprawling parade featuring 200 warships on the Neva River in St. Petersburg, Putin, 73, posed in front of a giant poster of a submarine and sat for a very awkward televised meeting with Navy personnel.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter turned critic, said the Kremlin went into a tailspin after the event went over poorly with the public. He alluded to Josef Stalin’s deadly purges of political dissenters in 1937 to warn of chilling parallels he said are playing out now. Putin is apparently on the hunt for a scapegoat within his administration after former FSB director Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin’s closest advisers, convinced him that liberals who infiltrated his orbit were to blame.
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