Far from the Ukrainian battlefields, an equally bitter war is being played out in the Kremlin.
Where an isolated and paranoid Vladimir Putin fights on two other fronts: his failing health, and the shifting loyalty of those around him.
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According to the American weekly
Newsweek
, the American intelligence services are closely monitoring the state of the Russian president and have already produced four confidential reports for the attention of the tenant of the White House, Joe Biden.
The latest, dating from the very last days of May, focuses on Vladimir Putin's degraded appearance, his long absences attributed to cancer treatment, his puffy appearance, a distinct stiffening and ill-concealed tremors of the hand.
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"
He gives the change admirably
", comments one of the confidential sources of
Newsweek
, as evidenced by the images of the meeting, Friday June 3, of the Russian head of state with his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall, in Sochi.
Frank handshakes, rapid movements, but also a form of feverishness in the approach, which the Kremlinologists will not have failed to note.
According to the American media, it was the French who would have shared with their American colleagues valuable information relating to the health of Vladimir Putin after Emmanuel Macron's visit to Moscow on February 7.
The experience of the French president, deprived of all physical contact with his Russian counterpart and relegated to the end of a 6-meter-long table, made of white beech wood, would have given indications of the state of dilapidation physical and moral of the Russian president.
From there to imagine an “expiration date” for the master of the Kremlin, on the other hand, American analysts remain cautious.
No one has forgotten the erroneous predictions about the supposedly poor health of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden in the past.
Game of musical chairs
What does not suffer from dispute, on the other hand, is due to the game of musical chairs in Putinian circles: in April, the presidential adviser Valentin Yumashev would have left his functions, without any other form of explanation delivered by an evasive spokesman.
The resignation, forced or spontaneous, of Yumashev, is not trivial: he is the former son-in-law of President Boris Yeltsin who died in 2007. Aged 64, Yumashev is the one who would have set foot in the Vladimir Putin's stirrup, offering him his first job in the Kremlin in 1997.
In March, Anatoli Chubais, a former close collaborator of Boris Yeltsin, also ex-vice-president and vice-prime minister aged 66, had given up his duties as negotiator with international organizations on the question of sustainable development.
Other Russian officials, diplomats, quit their posts with a bang.
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In its latest report, the US National Intelligence Directorate validated other information that an attack was narrowly foiled by Kremlin security, prompting Vladimir Putin to further isolate himself from the outside world.
