Official portrait of Sergey Shoigu with awards.
Date 7 June 2014, 11:22:38 Courtesy of Wikipedia 
Author Ministry of Defence
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence.

The UK Sun reports:

When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an emboldened Shoigu reportedly promised Putin he would take Kyiv within three days.

But he failed to deliver, as Russia’s meat-grinder war swallowed up endless soldiers and defence budgets.

Shoigu was fired in May 2024 as defence minister and installed as secretary of the Kremlin’s security council.8

Now a leaked report from a  European intelligence agency has linked the senior official to “the risk of a coup”.

The report notes the former defence minister’s continued and “significant influence” over “military high command”.

…

Shoigu was first tied to coup fears last month when his former deputy Ruslan Tsalikov was arrested over suspected corruption.

…

The source claimed the internet block included the Lubyanka headquarters of the FSB security service, the Russian Presidential Administration, the Security Council, and Moscow-City VIP skyscraper district.

Special forces units of the Ministry of Defence and the FSB were also reportedly blocked.

Insiders previously told The Sun that Putin’s closest allies are ready to oust the tyrant in a bid to save their own wealth.

Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine has seen the country’s defence costs skyrocket, hitting 15.5trillion roubles (£144bn) as food prices spikes by 18.6 per cent in just two years.

At the same time, the war has reached a deadlock.

Some 1.2million Russian soldiers have been killed, wounded or are missing since Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago.An extraordinary surge of pessimism about Russia’s war in Ukraine has engulfed hard-line Putin supporters as they become increasingly disillusioned with their leader.

As fears of a coup take hold, paranoid Putin has retreated to an underground unit and ramped up security.

Slava Ukraine