From his labyrinth of subterranean bunkers, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin has been recounting an endless barrage of Moscow’s military victories across Ukraine, with one citadel after another falling to invading Russian troops.

To anyone trapped in a similar underground shelter, or inside a Russian prison camp, with access to no other information except Putin’s tightly controlled propaganda channels, these conquests might be believed.

But many of these “triumphs” are works of fiction, part of an elaborate alternative reality that Putin continually constructs to shape the beliefs and reactions of 140 million Russians, along with a smaller audience thousands of kilometers away - the elites ensconced inside the White House, says one of the West’s top scholars on the war that will decide whether European-style democracy prevails in Ukaine or is crushed by Russia’s militarized autocracy.

In just one instance, says Peter Dickinson, a British scholar at the globally influential Washington, DC-based Atlantic Council think tank, the Russian president bragged that his armored divisions had recently taken over the ancient city of Kupyansk, in eastern Ukraine.

Focusing a worldwide spotlight on Putin’s fabricated wartime advances, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky trekked into Kupyansk and filmed himself patrolling the peaceful streets at the heart of the city, Dickinson pointed out in an interview.

“Today, I am in the Kupyansk sector, with our warriors,” Zelensky says in the YouTube-posted video .

“I visited our troops and congratulated them. I thank each of the units, everyone who is fighting here, everyone who is destroying the occupier.”

“Today, achieving results on the frontline is crucial so that Ukraine can achieve results in diplomacy.”

“All our strong positions within the country,” Zelensky adds, “translate into strong positions in the negotiations to end the war.”

Similar scenes have played out in a series of sequels: Putin claims a new military conquest, and one of the leaders of Ukraine’s blitzed but thriving democracy films himself reporting from inside the still-free city.

Unlike Zelensky, who constantly visits the heroes of Ukraine’s resistance on the front lines of the conflict, Putin almost never dares to touch down inside occupied Ukraine, and instead has retreated into a vast warren of sub-surface hideouts, says Dickinson.

“Ukraine’s drone and missile strikes are a key reason why Putin has increasingly retreated to his bunkers ,” he told me in an earlier interview.

Putin seems to be on the run, moving from one subterranean shelter to another as Ukraine steps up its airstrikes across Russia via bomb-capped drones and newly developed missiles.

With Ukraine’s high-speed breakthroughs in extending the range and firepower of its rockets and drones, Putin knows Zelensky has the ability to hit deeper and deeper inside Russia, so he is becoming more and more shell-shocked, Dickinson says.

At the same time, the longtime scholar on Ukraine says, "Putin is well aware that Ukraine’s increasing ability to conduct long-range strikes poses a significant threat to Russia’s domestic stability and economy."

“These attacks are also bringing the war home to the Russian population.”

“It is therefore crucial for him [Putin] to reassure domestic audiences with tales of relentless battlefield successes and advances in Ukraine.”

Trained as a rising star in the KGB, or state security police of the Soviet Union, to face off against “enemies of the state” and foreign intelligence operatives, Putin aims to defeat his adversaries partly through KGB-developed psychological warfare tactics.

“Putin feels the need to exaggerate Russia’s military gains in order to demoralize Ukraine’s Western allies and discourage further support for Kyiv,” Dickinson says.

“More generally,” he adds, Putin “knows the performance of the Russian army since 2022 has been far below expectations and feels the need to project strength” through wins in imaginary battles.

One of the top targets in the Kremlin commander’s replaying his fantasized victories is his counterpart in the White House, along with the dual American real estate tycoons, neophytes to diplomacy and defense, who have been appointed to cajole Putin into entering peace talks , Dickinson says.

One outstanding figure in the top American leadership has failed to be even slightly bedazzled by Putin’s tales of defense triumphs during the Kremlin commissar’s quest to reconstruct the lost Soviet empire, to resurrect an age when Moscow’s military ranked with Washington’s as a world superpower.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe recounted during a recent talk, posted on YouTube, that over the last year the Ukraine resistance has managed to halt virtually any advances by Russia’s invaders .

“Right now, Russia occupies 20 percent of Ukraine,” Ratcliffe said during the mid-July Pennsylvania Defense & Innovation Summit. “When I came in as CIA director, 18 months ago, Russia occupied 19 percent of Ukraine.”

“The pace of their [the Russians’] advance has stopped [with] Ukraine’s mastery of emerging technologies, in this case, drone warfare, asymmetric warfare.”

“It’s such a great equalizer.”

Ukraine’s ongoing leaps in developing robotic warriors, including ground cyber-soldiers and AI pilots, has been astounding, the CIA director said.

“When we talk about AI powered robots and drones, the impact that they have” on the battlefield has been “profound”.

“It’s why we’re now four and a half years into that conflict, and, the takeaway is, the mastery of technology, and these emerging technologies, is every bit as important as military strength.”

“And so it’s why an inferior force, four and a half years later, has held off the superior force of Russia against Ukraine.”

“Our intelligence,” Ratcliffe added, “is consistent with some of the open source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine.”

“So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes.”

“And that’s because AI powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low cost killing machines.”

Ratcliffe made a secretive stopover in Moscow toward the close of summer, but few details of his mission have been released.

The head of the Central Intelligence Agency, who holds a doctorate in law, likely has high-precision maps of Ukraine that detail the exact positions of the opposing Ukrainian and Russian armed forces, and each sector of territory gained or lost since the start of the invasion, along with high-resolution satellite imagery of every drone and missile assault launched across Russia and Ukraine.

But if Ratcliffe confronted his Russian counterparts with their long-frozen battlefronts in order to press for peace, since then there has been no de-escalation in Moscow’s missile attacks on democratic Ukraine.

Right after Ratcliffe’s visit, Putin revived his threats to launch nuclear missiles against European states helping Ukraine repel its Russian invaders, in a provocative call to arms posted on the President of Russia website .

Days later, French President Emmanuel Macron made a surprise trip to preside over the test launch of a French nuclear-capable missile by the submarine Le Vigilant off the coast of Brittany, in a rejoinder to Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling, reported Le Monde , France’s top broadsheet newspaper.

With Moscow’s nuclear brinkmanship and the potential pullback of the American nuclear shield from Europe, France has begun exploring closer nuclear cooperation, but not a guaranteed nuclear umbrella, with its strongest allies, including the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. Even as it builds up its strategic arsenal, Paris could experiment with stationing nuclear-capable jets across some of these allies.

The Russian president’s escalating nuclear belligerence, says Elena Grossfeld, a postdoctoral researcher at the prestigious Swedish Defense University , could foreshadow an armed attack by Russian troops on a NATO nation, possibly within months.

And just weeks after targeting a Ukrainian rail line that onetime British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former CIA Director David Petraeus were traveling on with a twin-drone kamikaze attack, the Kremlin leadership issued a new provocation, warning all foreign diplomats to leave Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, or face “mortal danger” by staying.

“Russia has a message for foreign diplomats in Kyiv: Leave, or risk your lives ,” said Katarina Mathernova, the European Union’s Ambassador to Ukraine, in a defiant post on X.

“Our answer: We are staying.”

“The EU Delegation is staying.”

“Threatening us will not stop Europe’s support for Ukraine. It only reminds us why that support matters!”

In an official EU communique, the ambassador added: “All European Union embassies remain open in Kyiv, and Russia should not test the Vienna Convention’s limits.”

“ We have 25 member states with embassies in Kyiv , and all of them are staying.”

“There are the Vienna Conventions, which regulate the activities of diplomatic missions worldwide, and Russia would be wise not to test their limits,” she added.

Any airstrike on an embassy in Ukraine would violate the pivotal Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which mandates: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Just as Russia’s entire invasion of Ukraine is illegal and violates the UN’s ban on the use of force in international relations, an armed attack on an embassy would also likely be grounds for a justified counterattack on Russia, under Article 51 of the Charter, which states: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”

“Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense,” the Charter adds, “shall be immediately reported to the [UN] Security Council.”