Putin can purge as many officials as he wants and fill up the Gulag. USA intelligence is not dependent on Russians.

25 March 2022

Ukraine (click here) minister Anton Gerashchenko has claimed Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu had suffered a heart attack after a heated confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin where Putin squarely blamed him for the ‘failure’ of his special military operation in Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (click here) was seen Thursday for the first time in some two weeks, for the briefest of moments, in a video released by the Kremlin, as his absence from view prompted questions from journalists.

Shoigu, a close ally of Putin and a leading architect of Russia’s floundering invasion of Ukraine, last appeared in public on March 11. His disappearance has prompted speculation of health problems, or punishment for his questionable stewardship of the military.

A short video of Russian President Vladimir Putin holding video conference consultations released Thursday showed Shoigu as one of the participants. But coming in the wake of speculation on the minister’s disappearance, some media outlets wondered whether the brief clip was included solely to silence concerns....