Another sign of Putin’s mounting troubles: Former military officer Alexander Lunin, in a Thursday Instagram message to Putin, warned the Russian leader that there would be “an armed uprising” if Putin did not tell “the truth” about the war in Ukraine in a “live-broadcast” from the Kremlin—alongside Lunin. Otherwise he added, “the army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin.”

Lunin claimed he’d been asked to “deliver a message” to Putin by (unnamed) officials in the military or security services.

The takeaway point here isn’t that a coup is necessarily imminent but that the Kremlin’s narrative of success on all fronts is being shredded by the huge casualties rates in the battlefield, the failure to make gains on the ground, Ukraine’s relentless drone strikes deep into Russia’s interior, the mounting economic fallout from the war, and the increasing crisis in Crimea.