The War Putin Cannot End and the Plot He Will Not Admit

Putin claims Ukraine tried to kill him. Intelligence disagrees. Sources point instead to a failed internal assassination, exposing a Kremlin trapped by war, fear and betrayal.

The Kremlin says Ukrainian drones tried to kill the Russian president. The evidence says otherwise. What emerges instead from Western intelligence assessments and from sources inside Russia is a far more dangerous story of fracture at the heart of power in Moscow and of a leader who may now need the war more than ever to survive.