Are Russia's War Hawks Turning Against Putin?

Kremlin via Reuters  

Daily Beast: Putin’s Two Biggest War Hawks Are Turning on Him 

The cracks in Vladimir Putin’s war machine appear to be growing as two of his biggest allies in the senseless slaughter of Ukrainians blast the country’s “weak” military. 

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov went public with his complaints late Monday on Telegram, where he said he was “very unhappy” with the current state of the war. 

“Earlier we used to say that we were conducting a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, but the war is already happening on our territory,” he said in a 13-minute audio recording, apparently referring to shelling in Russia’s Belgorod region that local authorities blamed on Ukraine over the weekend. 

“We have already declared martial law in the territories bordering Ukraine but they [Ukrainians] are not shy, they shoot… We, in response, are answering weakly,” he said, calling for the Russian military to “wipe out cities” any time a shell flies toward Russian territory.  

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WNU Editor: The above Daily Beast article focuses on two of Putin's allies (Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the owner of the Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin). But they pale in comparison to others in the Kremlin that includes Russia's security council, a group of mainly hard-liners and technocrats that have become Putin's wartime cabinet since the invasion of Ukraine. They have been pushing for a major escalation in the war since May, and if this 300,000 man mobilization fails to achieve Russia's goals by spring of next year, my gut tells me that Putin will then let these men run the war.