Chairman of the Council of Reservists of the Ukrainian Land Forces Ivan Tymochko shared this and other opinions with Espreso TV.“Putin is a KGB agent. Putin is a KGB agent to the core. He definitely gets information from multiple sources. There’s this belief in a ‘good tsar,’ that if he only knew the truth, that the boyars are lying, he would act. But I think he has plenty of sources, even if some are compromised, and he understands the real situation on the battlefield,” Tymochko noted.At the same time, Tymochko stressed that halting the war would endanger Putin’s dictatorship. “The idea of simply ‘taking your coat and going home’ would cause huge problems in Russia itself. That’s up to a million Russian soldiers with combat experience, used to high pay, and what’s next? Returning home to a dilapidated hut with no right to live as they think they deserve after serving in the army, and with no means of subsistence. Naturally, they will fall back on what they learned at war — looting and killing,” he said.Putin now faces many challenges, according to Ivan Tymochko.“Putin constantly talks about the changing balance of power. But now that the balance has shifted against him, admitting it is unacceptable for him. His political and economic elites would tear him apart, not to mention the military,” Tymochko explained. “He knows the real information, he knows the real state of affairs. Perhaps that’s what angers him the most.”Russian President Vladimir Putin is forced to engage in international negotiations despite having no desire to.“His principle, as Solovyov [prominent propaganda figure in Russia - ed.] once put it: ‘He is like a lord and all politicians are servants somewhere in the distance.’ But he must approach them to prevent the situation from becoming entirely destructive.”According to Tymochko, Putin continues to maneuver as a former KGB and FSB officer in an attempt to retain control. “If he were confident he could maintain this for long, he would not have gone to the negotiating table,” he noted. “Now he constantly comments on the frontline situation, which shows he understands that Russian society is tense — and he, as their ‘one and only leader’ so far, is trying to reassure them.”