Putin scrambles amid 'mutiny' as Russians slaughtered en masse - leadership turns 'toxic'

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Image: Getty)

Vladimir Putin will be urgently forced to order a mass mobilisation in Russia due to the huge scale of his war losses, Finland’s respected president Alexander Stubb has warned.

He forecast a backlash from Russians against forced conscription triggering a “problem” for Putin. This comes amid criticism of the war effort from the Kremlin’s leading backers of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. “For one percent of Ukrainian land [Putin has] lost 500,000 Russian soldiers,” said Mr Stubb. “I think that puts things into perspective. And now that we are in a situation where the Ukrainians are killing over 30,000 Russians per month…

Mr Stubb said Russia's appalling deathtoll is unsustainable. (Image: Getty)

“The Russians are not able to recruit back, we're getting closer to the moment when there might have to be a general [mobilisation] call from the Russian part. And I think that runs a problem.”

As if on cue, Russian police reportedly raided migrants in Moscow sending 40-plus to a military recruitment office, from there they could be sent to the war.

Putin's spokesman today sought to downplay the forecast from Mr Stubb, claiming mass mobilisation was not not currently on the agenda.

But Russia’s influential pro-war bloggers are angry at recent Ukrainian strikes on oil ports and refineries plus heavy war losses.

“We've been kicked in the balls again,” raged state TV propagandist and war pundit Aleksandr Sladkov, after five days of strikes Russia's leading oil exporting hub unimpeded by Russian air defences. “The port in Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland is burning again.”

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“Much is being said behind the scenes about our possibly cunning plan,” he declared. “But some doubt it: what kind of cunning plan is this, which sees our businesses swatted like flies with a flyswatter?”

The unprecedented backlash further hit Putin with another war fanatic Maksim Kalashnikov candidly stating the Russian elite has lost faith in the top leadership.

“Now our ruling [class] view the current top leadership as a toxic figure - not even an asset, but a liability,” he said.

“They very much want this war to end, for the return of the old good times, when one could freely travel to the West, not fear sanctions, sell hydrocarbons, and regain the European market.”

Symbolically, he spoke in front of a picture of Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union, briefly toppled in a 1991 coup before his country fell apart.

In a post on Telegram, Putin’s own ultra-nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin said he met troops on the frontline and found them in “a frenzied rage combined with despair".

“I didn't expect everything to be so harsh and serious.” In a chorus of gloom over the war, another Russian propagandist, war correspondent for Putin’s favourite newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Grigory Kubatyan, admitted Russia’s vast army was failing, and peace talks were now needed to end the conflict.

“The war must be won or ended to save lives,” he said. "Over the past four years, we haven't been able or didn't want to win. So we'll have to negotiate. It's impossible to wage war indefinitely.

“Our men on the front lines are heroic. But they are human beings, and they need rest.”