Russia is on the verge of collapse - opposition politician Yakovenko 

The Kherson case could be a turning point in Russia's domestic political agenda. This is an extremely symbolic case that could be explained to the Russian generals with the help of false propaganda formulas. Everything goes to a certain finish line. How do you see the current unfolding of the situation after the escape, or preparation for the escape, from Kherson?

The first reaction to what happened was a feeling of joy that a very important event took place, it really is, it is a breakthrough. But I would not say that now, after Kherson, the fascist regime in Russia will fall and everything will roll back. No, it will not. There are enough resources for survival, and we do not know after which next victory of the Ukrainian army the Russian regime will start to collapse. The cracks have already started, it is obvious. The crack between Putin and the Russian army is deepening, it is noticeable, because the generals were against this war from the very beginning, there is direct evidence of this - the speeches of General Ivashov, Colonel Khodaryonok. These are people who have worked in the General Staff for many years. I personally know both General Ivashov and Khodaryonok and understand that these people would never, under any circumstances - as they are absolutely ardent imperialists - speak for themselves, it was a clear message from the General Staff. But Putin forced them to fight - the General Staff, the army, and now he is trying to make them responsible for the defeats. First of all, the blow struck by Prigozhin and Kadyrov, who brought General Lapin's head to Putin on a platter, was directed against Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov, who is already clearly in disgrace and will probably be the next victim. Generals do not want to be sheep to the slaughter, they will say their word at a certain moment, when there is complete dissatisfaction with Putin.

Meanwhile, Putin's regime has consolidated temporarily. I am closely watching what is happening now on federal channels, in the information field. And what is happening there is the following: constant spells that there is no panic, there are no problems, constant reminder of Kutuzov's words "having lost Moscow, we will not lose Russia - having lost the army, we will lose everything". Trying to replace Moscow with Kherson, they say that the loss of Kherson, of course, is bad, but not terrible, we will win it back, the main thing is that we have saved the military. There is full support for Surovikin's decision on TV by Prigozhin, Kadyrov and all of them, in the entire information space.

An important point: Prigozhin, Kadyrov, Surovikin and so on have merged together. It seems that they have a fundamentally new militarist clan, which should provide some form of transit, life of war criminals who may be "extreme" in the current situation. In particular, we are talking about Prigozhin, Kadyrov and co.

There was an instruction from the presidential administration to include in the ban lists, to prohibit the publication of the opinions of those people who used to be regular speakers - General Gurulov and others, those people who constantly criticized Putin's regime for insufficient determination - that he does not drop a nuclear bomb on Ukraine, that Europe has not been invaded yet. That is, they are now trying to remove these crazy, super-imperialists. Earlier they were given the green light, earlier it was allowed to criticize the authorities for insufficient cannibalism - now they have been added to the stop-lists. As for people, the party of war has been formed, it includes Kiriyenko (he is one of the leaders of the party of war), Kadyrov and Prigozhin, General Surovikin. And plus all the TV. There is no alternative at all, the TV is the mouthpiece of the party of war. The party of war includes those who do not know how to fight, do not know what it is at all. Or proxies, such as Prigozhin's and Kadyrov's army. And it is quite possible that some governors, who have their own regional armies thanks to Putin's decree, will start joining the party of war, because Putin demanded from them to create terrorist defense units. I believe that this will be another step towards the collapse of Russia, because the governor who does not dream of separating from Russia and creating an independent state is bad. We saw this process during the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the main beneficiaries were the leaders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Republics, who all became heads of independent states. Their dream came true: they stopped going to the Kremlin to ask for money. Now the situation is similar, Russia is certainly on the verge of collapse. This is not the only, but quite a likely scenario. Both Kadyrov and Prigozhin have become very influential players. As for statistics, I looked at the data of the "Medialogy" company, which monitors the presence of various persons and organizations in the media field of Russia, analyzes several tens of thousands of Russian media. So Kadyrov is now the #1 leader by the number of references in Russia, with a very large gap from his closest rival Sobyanin. Sobyanin is the mayor of Moscow, the largest region, the richest and the most influential one, and Kadyrov is more than twice ahead of him in the number of references in the federal media. Unfortunately, there are no figures for Prigozhin, but it is obvious that he is also one of the leaders. He has his own "empire", he is now actively engaged in foreign policy. His recent statement that he "has interfered, interferes and will interfere in the US elections" is quite famous. Then he joked that they are performing precision surgery to remove kidneys, liver and heart in America - a typical blatant joke. Prigozhin is a real criminal who served time for serious crimes in the Soviet Union and who continues his criminal activities in Russia. In fact, they now have independent resources, because each of them has its own army.

I do not believe in the consensus between Patrushev with his story about "Ryazan sugar" and, for example, the environment of Kadyrov, Prigozhin and so on.

In fact, each of these people is playing their own game. There is actually a jar of spiders, the bulldogs have long since crawled out from under the carpet, blood and saliva are flying all around. Lapin's head is the first victim, or rather one of the most obvious ones. Cherkesov, the head of the FDCS (Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation - ed.), the same FSB general who started with Putin, has just died. I am not 100% sure that this death is not accidental, but he was a healthy, not too old man not complaining about his health. General Cherkesov was the man who described the power situation in Russia, that they, the Chekists, managed to hang Russia on the Chekist hook. Yes, this is the famous Chekist hook, he said that the Chekists are the new nobles. It was quite a loud story. This was a person very close to Putin who literally just died. I am not sure that this is a criminal story, but the showdown continues. A much less significant figure is Gauleiter Stremousov, who also just died, according to the official version, in a car accident. I somehow do not really believe that this happened, I think that such figures are just scandalous. By the way, Stremousov was a clear example of an incredible personnel hunger for gauleiters, an indicator that there were too few traitors in Ukraine. This is a very strange story, when in a country where 20% of the territory was occupied, there were very few traitors. Really few, so there was a difficult choice, in this sense, Ukrainians very seriously let Putin down. These are few people. Stremousov, a caricature figure, has already started to get in the way with his pathological stupidity, his scandalous ugliness and incredible activity. I believe that he was finally removed by his own people. Although in general, it could have been others - the fate of traitors is always difficult.

So the next one may well be Strelkov? According to this logic, if strange deaths or liquidations of odious characters begin.

The fact that Strelkov was sent to the front is a significant event. Although Strelkov is a much more important figure than Stremousov. Still, this is a man with a large number of liters of blood on his hands, who really deserves a more serious conversation and greater responsibility. This is an international terrorist, one of the obvious perpetrators of the downing of the Malaysian Boeing. He is certainly somewhat dangerous for the Kremlin, because if he opens his mouth now and starts screaming about treason regarding Kherson, it will be unpleasant, although not for long: his mouth will be closed quickly. In fact, Putin's regime is now consolidating, it is trying to smooth out contradictions. We constantly hear calls not to shake the regime, to stop criticizing and to get together. What does it mean? If Ukraine is not able to liberate all the territories in the near future and return to the 1991 borders, the war will most likely drag on, as they say, the winter will be long. Because Russia has the resources, its mobilization reserve is 25 million people who are subject to mobilization, and you can add beyond this number - up to 27 million. Of course, it is impossible to send everyone to the front - not everyone can be found. After all, most of them, about a million, fled abroad, because they do not want to fight, kill or die, Russians do not want anything like that. But some will be caught. The problem is that the narrow neck of the mobilization infrastructure allows sending a maximum of 150 thousand people to the front. There is a limited number of barracks, and it is impossible to just take people, pull them out of bed, load them into cars, buses, trains and send them to the front line. They are cannon fodder, even without skin. The Ukrainian army will not even notice these people if they are sent like this, so it will not work. That is, we need at least some infrastructure, at least a few days to keep them at the training ground, to teach them something, to dress them somehow, to give them some weapons. All this logistics requires infrastructure. And the infrastructure is designed for 150 thousand people.