‘There is profound disappointment in him’: mood in Russia turns against Putin / Russia hits Kyiv with hypersonic ballistic missile in ‘deranged’ attack

Increasingly isolated president is determined to press on with Ukraine war, say well-placed sources, despite ailing economy

Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker

Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow earlier in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the lobby and embraced his former schoolteacher Vera Gurevich, who kissed him on both cheeks.

He then helped Gurevich into his car and drove her to dinner at the Kremlin.

It came just a day after several western media outlets, citing a European intelligence report, claimed Putin had spent weeks hiding in an underground bunker, gripped by fears of assassination or even a coup.

The televised meeting was carefully crafted to reinforce a very different image of the Russian leader, one which he has refined over 25 years in power: the approachable, confident president, a man of the people casually dropping in on an old teacher.

But while fears of an imminent coup are exaggerated, there is little doubt that Putin is entering the most challenging period of his long rule. Interviews with several people in the orbit of the Russian leader, as well as sources in the Russian business world and western intelligence officials, paint a picture of an isolated leader surrounded by an elite that is becoming rapidly disillusioned, both with the faltering war in Ukraine and the economic downturn at home.

“There’s definitely been a shift in mood among the elites this year … there is profound disappointment in Putin,” said a well-connected business leader, adding that there was “a growing sense that some kind of catastrophe is looming”.

“No one believes everything will suddenly collapse tomorrow,” the source said. “But there is a growing realisation that utterly senseless, self-destructive decisions keep being made. People who once defended Putin no longer do. Any sense of a future has disappeared.”…’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/24/there-is-profound-disappointment-in-him-mood-in-russia-turns-against-putin

++++++++++++++

Russia hits Kyiv with hypersonic ballistic missile in ‘deranged’ attack

Assault hits water facility, market, residential buildings and schools, killing at least four and injuring dozens

++++++++++++++++++

Russia targets its oldest human rights group, Memorial

Multipolarity, the Mantra of Authoritarianism

Victor Serge: The Spirit of Liberty

Rare archival materials from the Stalin era

Decentralizing the Cold War: an interview

The Gulag Archipelago: An Epic of True Evil

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Letter to the Soviet Leaders (1974)