Putin first became president amid terrorist attacks: a scenario that is likely to repeat — analyst Holubov

He said this on Espreso TV.

"Given the remarkable experience of Mr. Putin, who came to power against the backdrop of blew up buildings in Moscow and not only in Moscow. Everyone who is interested can easily Google how it was done. I do not rule out that on the eve of Putin's election, he will mobilize his electorate in this way again. That is, some, relatively speaking, possibly Chechen, possibly Ukrainian, most likely, under the current conditions, "Ukrainian terrorists" (in quotation marks) will commit a terrible terrorist attack," explains Holubov.

According to the analyst, American and German intelligence agencies may be highly optimistic about the likelihood of new terrorist attacks in Russia: "Maybe it won't happen, I sincerely hope it won't happen, but the normal work of intelligence is to warn of some risks, to talk about the possibility of these risks, and it seems to me that from the point of view of Western intelligence services, this is an absolutely logical story about being in Russia, in Moscow in particular."

Holubov suggests that Putin's popularity is not rising.

"People don't express their dissatisfaction with the war directly, but I understand that certain opinion polls probably show that many Russians don't like the deterioration of their living standards, they can't, don't want to, don't know how to talk about it openly. Yes, they don't care that someone is killing innocent people on their behalf, but when they don't have enough to eat, they start to dislike something," the analyst concluded.