A MAN who has fought Vladimir Putin from both inside the Kremlin and in exile knows a thing or two about the tyrant who rules like a “mafia boss” but thinks like a spy.
Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian MP who now helps lead armed Russian resistance, revealed the despot is not the all-powerful ruler he tries to be - but a man trapped inside a "spider’s web” of his own making.
The Russian renegade, 48, was a member of the Russian State Duma from 2007 until 2016 when “under personal order’s from Putin” he was suddenly exiled from Russia.
Now on the outside, he heads a resistance network of pro-Ukrainian guerrilla fighters and helps lead a Russian shadow cabinet forming in Kyiv to prepare for Putin’s “inevitable” demise.
He told The Sun he "always dreamed of changing the world", adding that when Putin, 71, came to power in 1999 he felt he “needed to go into politics”.
He's been a member of the opposition ever since.
Ponomarev once believed “the system could be changed through elections” - but the Kremlin soon revealed itself to be an inaccessible machine oiled by greed, corruption and sordid “under-the-table” deals.
This is the mechanics of Putin’s gangster empire, he said. "He’s a KGB guy - and this is his rule of governing."
Ponomarev continued: "Putin has a mobster personality, he’s like a Godfather-style mafia boss.
“He lives by certain rules of the game, we use a Russian word ‘ponyatiya’ which literally translates as ‘understandings’."
Just like in a prison, his regime relies on a “set of rules of behaviour” that maintain a “criminal environment”.
But what the Russian tyrant hates most, Ponomarev revealed, is even a sniff of “betrayal”.
Rooted in his years as a spy, it's all over for anyone who Putin "feels has betrayed him or the system" - and he won't hesitate to “neutralise” the threat.
Fellow Putin critic and dissident Russian MP Denis Voronenkov was on his way to speak to Ponomarev in Kyiv when he was shot dead in the middle of the street in March, 2017.
Russian intelligence were understood to be behind the brazen daylight contract killing.
As a result, Ponomarev now receives personal protection by Ukraine’s security services and, as he once admitted, keeps “a machine gun by the door”.
For years now, Putin has been the target of feverish speculation and rumours regarding his health and possible use of body doubles to hide from the public.
But Ponomarev argues that some of the most outlandish claims about Russia's ageing ruler are coming from inside the Kremlin - a usual factory of falsehoods.
“I don’t believe in the doubles as I believe they are spread by Putin himself,” he claimed.
He argued that the paranoid president's henchmen are trying to shield him behind a cloak of lies.
Although it seems a bizarre and possibly counter-intuitive tactic, the longtime Kremlin critic claimed it is a simple protection mechanism.
“When you believe there are a lot of doubles then you don’t know who to attack.... an attack on Putin is pointless [if] you don’t know who you will kill," Ponomarev said.
“It is the same about [his] health,” he added, calling what the Kremlin is doing an “information vaccine” to be used against the “real problems” that may one day plague Putin’s health.
“I believe they are deliberately spreading rumours like ‘he is almost dying’,” he explained, in order to get the Russian population used to the claims as just lies "that come to no real end”.
“So when it comes to a real problem - no one will believe it."
These wild rumours reached their peak in October when the Kremlin was forced to issue an after reports surfaced in a well-followed Telegram channel.
In a comical set of events, a few days later the Kremlin was forced to once again insist the despot was still not dead and deny reports that a doppelganger had taken control of Russia.
[Putin] is the spider that sits in the middle of the web
Ilya Ponomarev
A persisting tale is that scores of Putin lookalikes - who have undergone years of painful plastic surgery - are ruthlessly trained by the FSB and kept under “constant surveillance”.
Based on the day-to-day shifting nature of Vlad’s face and strange changes in his behaviour, commentators have alleged these stand-ins frequently attend public appearances, walkabouts and meetings.
Ukrainian intelligence has repeatedly arguing that Putin is on his last legs and the show is run by his body doubles.
Despite Putin's cultivation of himself as an “action man” - questions have long been raised over his and, including
Although Ponomarev doesn’t give credit to claims of “something terminal” that could kill him by say tomorrow, he does not see a long life ahead for the despot.
Before he was exiled, Ponomarev witnessed Putin having ongoing health "problems" and the 71-year-old regularly being attended to by medical teams.
"He could die in five years, three years, could be seven years, we shouldn’t make bets based on that, if God decides then that’s good.”
But we shouldn’t rely on that for now, he said, “we need to fight!”
The opposition leader is keen to undermine the idea Putin has spent decades cultivating of him being a kind of lone, omnipotent figure that rules Russia.
“[Putin] decides which strings to pull,” Ponomarev said, but there are still wolves at his door.
“He is a spider that sits in the middle of the web and all the elements of the web are interested in keeping him alive.”
These “elements” Ponomarev refers to are the great Kremlin power-brokers - the military, security and government top brass.
The most powerful and deadly figures in the Russian state are currently considered to be PM Mikhail Mishustin or Nikolai Patruschev, the secretary of the security council that has "a lot of power in his hands," explained the Kremlin insider.
Putin’s spy chiefs Alexander Bortnikov and Sergei Naryshkin are also thought to be vying for the top job.
None of whom Ponomarev wants to allow the chance to lead Russia into even darker days.
Ponomarev helps lead a shadow cabinet called the Congress of People’s Deputies that he said is made up of 100 Russian politicians, 40 of which are still inside Russia.
They want to purge their motherland of Putinism - which he calls "modern day fascism" - and prepare Russia for the "100 per cent reality" that he will be toppled.
He doesn’t mention who, but he claims he is engaged with "top-level" figures inside the Kremlin who he hopes will defect to their side.
“We need to provide not just a stick but also a carrot to take them out and that is very important so that the system will start to collapse,” he explained with a wry smile.
For the last two years, the shadow cabinet has been drawing up plans for a post-Putin Russia and are waiting for what Ponomarev calls the "trigger moment".
Backed by their voluntary military force made up of pro-Ukrainian Russian resistance groups, he is ready to take on the Kremlin kingpin when the time is right.
"We are at a major milestone," he said confidently. "We are ready to strike."
Is he scared? "Yes, we are at war. But our men on the ground are risking far more than us."
