by Will Stewart, John O’Sullivan
Nov 6, 2025
The Daily Express
A visibly paranoid Vladimir Putin has accused Western intelligence agencies of plotting to undermine him and carve up Russia into tiny, controllable statelets.
The 73-year-old autocrat warned that his country could be “torn into tiny fragments controlled by the West.” His remarks followed a stark warning from his chief ideologist about the risk of a “civil war” erupting inside Russia.
“Provocations and attempts to incite discord between people must be stopped, given that the provocateurs themselves are typically based abroad: sponsored, financed, and directed by foreign intelligence services.”
Sounding increasingly distrustful, Putin added: “There’s increasingly talk of some kind of ‘decolonisation’ of Russia, which essentially amounts to dismembering the Russian Federation and inflicting [a] strategic defeat on us, torn into tiny fragments controlled by the West.”
Without offering proof, the long-time ruler claimed: “I must report to you that we have copies, simply copies, of documents from Western intelligence agencies and foreign centres working for them. [These] explicitly state the goal of destabilising Russia from within by sowing discord in our society, provoking conflicts along ethnic and religious lines.”
This week, Putin also hinted that Russia could resume nuclear weapons tests – including atomic detonations in the Arctic – as tensions with the West escalate.
According to him, Western governments are working to “destabilise the situation, inflame, and provoke conflicts,” using exiled Russian opposition groups as tools.
Kharichev, whose father-in-law helped develop the deadly Novichok nerve agent, warned: “In essence, there is one serious challenge facing society, it is simply called – civil war.”
He went on to caution that trust between the Russian people and the Kremlin was eroding and needed to be rebuilt through “patriotic education.”
“As far as the state is concerned, the main challenge is the loss of trust in the authorities and the breakdown of the political system,” Kharichev wrote in an article for the Gosudarstvo (“State”) journal.