Vladimir Putin has started a witch-hunt of those who he believes are “guilty” of the stalled invasion in Ukraine and his Defence Minister Sergie Shoigu has disappeared and has not been seen for 12 days.

Putin’s witch-hunt against his circle of advisors started because he is said to be “incandescent” that the US and UK have so far been privy to the Kremlin’s military tactics.

Kremlin sources have said military leaks have been passed by Whitehall and Washington to Kyiv’s intelligence, which is why Putin has lost so many soldiers and top Generals by Ukrainian forces.

Read more on Russia-Ukraine war:

Vladimir Putin suffers the highest level Kremlin defection as his close ally quits and flees Russia in opposition to the war

Putin is facing mutiny by his own secret service aiming to ‘convince the West to respond militarily to stop aggression’

Russia threatens Poland with a nuclear strike if a ‘peace-keeping contingent’ is launched by NATO

Putin revives Stalinist war strategy by sending ‘execution squads’ to kill Russian deserters as thousands are fleeing

“He [Putin] is incandescent that US and UK intelligence appear to know the Russian army’s next moves all the time, starting with predicting the invasion before he was ready to acknowledge it,” said a source.

It has been said that Shoigu, 66, has vanished from view due to “heart problems” the Kremlin reports, and footage shows he was last seen 12 days ago, opposition media said.

The Kremlin website reported on 18 March that Shoigu had met with Putin to discuss the “progress of the special operation in Ukraine.”

Shoigu has been one of Putin’s more loyal allies, but there has been a strain over their relationship over the way the war is going and also with other security and top brass.

Putin has also been dismissive of the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov and has been publicly seen barking at the chief of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov.

This comes as Bortnikov is the most likely person to step in if Putin is ousted in a coup.

Putin is also targeting Igo Kostyukov, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and could have him removed, and has also publicly humiliated Sergey Naryshkin who is his SVR Foreign Intelligence chief.

Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov said military counterintelligence is probing an FSB security service department.

“That could mean that, finally, people in Moscow started asking themselves why the US intelligence was so accurate,” he told The New Yorker.

“Military counterintelligence is mostly about mole-hunting, identifying the sources of leaks.

“So it looks like now Putin is getting angry, not only with bad intelligence and the bad performance in Ukraine but also about the sourcing of the US intelligence about the invasion, and why US intelligence was so good before the invasion, and why the Americans knew so many things about what was coming.”