Moods and infighting in Putin's magic circle, with the Russian president who "doesn't appear able to take matters into his own hands at the moment" .
This was reported by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (Isw), even quoting the spokeswoman for the Moscow Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova , who admitted « internal struggles in the inner circle of the Kremlin » and that « the Kremlin would have lost tight control over the Russian information space » with Vladimir Putin «apparently unable at the moment to take the situation back in hand».
Zakharova, Isw points out, during a forum with journalists, academics and supporters of Russia spoke of unspecified "clashes between elites".
Zakharova - writes the Isw - said that the Kremlin " cannot replicate the Stalinist approach of establishing a modern equivalent of the Soviet Information Office due to the fighting between unspecified elites " within it.
This statement, writes the think tank, supports many of ISW's long-standing assessments of the deterioration of the Kremlin regime and the dynamics of control of the information space. And - he adds - it gives rise to various evaluations.
“That there is infighting in the Kremlin between key members of Putin's inner circle; that Putin has largely ceded the Russian information space over time to a variety of quasi-independent actors; and that Putin is apparently unable to take decisive action to regain control of the Russian information space ».
«It is not clear – adds Isw – why Zakharova, an expert high-level spokesperson, would have openly acknowledged these problems in a public context . He may have brought up these issues for the first time to temper the expectations of Russian nationalist bloggers about the Kremlin's current ability to be consistent about a unified narrative, or perhaps even a unified policy.
The person concerned promptly denied: "The statements attributed to me are false," she said.
