VLADIMIR Putin has reportedly stripped his protection police of their mobile phones and banned them from contacting family.
is said to be “genuinely afraid” for his life and has forced staff to stay at the residences they serve round the clock.
Kyiv’s ex-spy chief Valery Kondratyuk claimed that Putin has put his trust in what “the mystics and elders tell him” amid the phone ban.
His paranoia has previously resulted in blanket bans for staff, including when he .
His guards have been made to repeatedly tighten the ring of steel around him as he remains obsessed with fears of a coup or high-tech drone strike.
Personal cooks, photographers and bodyguards have been banned from using public transport or their phones.
Before they were ordered to stay in Putin’s homes at all times, spy cameras were fitted into their houses.
Kondratyuk also told Ukrainian outlet Pravda that Putin is not capable of launching an attack on Europe.
He claimed that unmarked breaching Nato territory are purely aimed at stopping support for .
However, European leaders are taking threats seriousl, and have recently .
and are developing escape procedure blueprints through the Suwalki Gap amid mounting fears of an attack.
The Suwalki Gap is a narrow 60-mile stretch along the border between Poland and Lithuania.
chiefs have long feared all-out war with Moscow could break out in the critical flashpoint.
Since the gap bridges Russian-allied Belarus to Putin’s heavily militarised exclave of Kaliningrad, it has become a prime defensive priority for the West.
If Moscow chose to cut off the small gap it would isolate the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – cutting off their land routes to Nato.
It comes as a bombshell investigation revealed that Putin has .
Guarded by a machine gun turret, the underground command centre is one of Russia’s most top-secret facilities, should nuclear war break out.
The 24-room tunnel is at the centre of a strategy to guarantee retaliatory nuclear strikes against the West.
Fitted with air filtration units to screen chemical, biological, and radioactive fallout, the bunker has been discovered beneath Kosvinsky Kamen mountain in the Ural region.
Codenamed Facility 1335, the cocoon was first built during the Cold War to ensure mutual destruction against the West in the event of a nuclear strike.
Dubbed the “Dead Hand project”, it would see back-up control channels activated if communication was lost with the Kremlin’s top brass.
These would transmit long-wave radio signals to mobilise missile launchers.
An investigation by The Sunday Times, Danish media group Danwatch and the Dossier Center revealed the site has now been rebuilt.
