Tyrant Vladimir Putin has reportedly been left psychologically shattered after the liberation of Kherson last week.
A senior military adviser in the office of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said the defeat has sparked a paranoid episode, with the Russian despot convinced his closest cronies could be plotting to take his life.
Shock and despair ensued among Putin loyalists and hardliners in Moscow after Ukraine liberated Kherson following a humiliating surrender from the despot's dismal soldiers.
Even state television presenters publicly lamented the loss of Kherson in southern Ukraine - the only regional capital that Putin's troops had captured in the seven months since the invasion in February.
An adviser to Zelensky's chief of staff Oleksiy Arestovich told The Times, Putin is quaking because "there is no forgiveness in Russia for tsars who lose wars".
He added: “He is fighting for his life now. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of the Russians, it means the end. The end of him as a political figure. And possibly in the physical sense.”
“This has forced even people who are very loyal to Putin to doubt that they can win this war,” Arestovich, 47, said.
Though Putin appears to be losing, miserably, his cruel bombardment of Ukraine's energy infrastructure has left millions of people without electricity, and many without water.
Arestovich believes the attacks are the Kremlin's ploy to "blackmail" Ukraine, and its Western backers, into calling for a roundtable talk.
Such talks would likely result in Moscow holding on to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk - the regions of Ukraine it has illegally snatched and occupied.
This would allow Putin to claim a victory in Russia - justifying the war to his domestic audience.
Ukrainian officials have said the only way they'll sit down with the tyrant is when Russia removes all its troops from all of Ukraine, including the occupied regions.
At the start of this month, The Mirror exclusively reported how one of Russia's key figures previously dubbed "Putin's "Brain" has called for his former pal to be topppled and even killed after the humilitation of Kherson.
Ultra-right-wing nationalist Alexander Dugin has become the first major Russian to break silence over growing disgust at Putin’s failed Ukraine invasion.
But worryingly, the 60-year-old fascist strategist is thought to be part of a growing body of Moscow elite calling for Putin to escalate in Ukraine and sees Kherson as a massive blow to Russian pride.
Soon after he posted his outburst on Telegram, furious over the Kherson retreat and fears of many Russians killed there, his tirade against Putin was removed.
But the Mirror can reveal the long-haired philosopher and Ukraine invasion hawk quoted from a story of the Golden Bough by James Frazer in which a king is killed.
The king was killed in the fictional story because he failed to bring rain during a drought and has his stomach ripped open.
In his angry rant, Dugin wrote: "We give the Ruler absolute fullness of power, and he saves us all, the people, the state, people, citizens, at a critical moment.
