An oligarch close to Vladimir Putin has cautioned friends that the Russian president’s “psychiatric health is bad” and the possibility he could use nuclear weapons is “very real,” and that “stories about him going bonkers are not a joke,” a top journalist with Bellingcat reports. “People who personally know [this oligarch] and other [insiders] have told me that big business closely affiliated to power are sitting as quiet as mice because the emperor’s madness is real, and the nuclear strike’s threat is very real, too,” Christo Grozev, who worked to identify the Salisbury poisoning suspects, told Ukraine-24 TV. Grozev identified the oligarch as a household name in Russia who has known Putin for several decades. “I have no exact data about his health condition, but… people who are close to him, including oligarchs [believe he has cancer],” Grozev said. “People next to him believe he has such a disease. It has become a factor in Russian inner politics… People do not believe Putin any more, do not believe he can be their guarantor. This is [the feeling] throughout the elites.”

However former U.K. Ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton told Sky News that Putin had put in a “coherent” and “very professional performance” at Victory Day in Moscow today, telling Sky News: “It is rather encouraging that it leaves me with the feeling that we are dealing with a rational individual there with whom hopefully in time it will be possible to do a sensible deal to bring this whole mess to an end.”