European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a weaker position than at any previous point in the war in Ukraine, citing battlefield losses, mounting casualties and growing public dissatisfaction inside Russia.

Aging, allegedly ailing Vladimir Putin has been mocked over his puffy, strangely altered face after the fearful, paranoid Russian dictator made a rare public appearance in Moscow over the weekend. The swollen-cheeked 73-year-old despot was spotted at an unusually quiet Victory Day parade to mark the 81st anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

The Russian strongman has dramatically ramped up security, including living in fortified bunkers, amid fears of a coup by 'elites.'

By Andrew Osborn MOSCOW, May 12 (Reuters) - The Kremlin has released a video of Vladimir Putin driving in Moscow and meeting an old school teacher in a hotel lobby, after Western media outlets cited a European intelligence report as saying the Russian president spent weeks holed up in bunkers.

After Russia hosted a scaled back Victory Day parade, focus turned to Putin’s suggestion the ongoing war was “coming to an end.”

The Russian leader is caught between an increasingly unpopular war and shifting global headwinds

Vladimir Putin publicly confronted long-running conspiracy theories about his identity this week after his former schoolteacher, 92-year-old Vera Gurevich, appeared to question whether the man greeting her in Moscow was really the Russian president himself.