Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be directing his anger against his security services.
Experts and analysts say that Putin was led to expect a swift victory over Ukraine by his intelligence and military chiefs, minimal resistance from the civilians of the country, and a network of loyalists willing to back a Kremlin-installed puppet government.
Russia has faced fierce resistance from all levels of Ukrainian society resulting in a mounting Russian death toll and a stalling invasion.
The FSB, the domestic security agency that Putin once headed, may be facing the most blame.
Sergei Beseda and his deputy have been placed under house arrest by Putin, according to an investigative journalist and expert on Russian security services.
According to Soldatov's sources, the Russian military's counterintelligence division has launched an investigation to identify possible spies.
The lack of political support in Ukraine for the invasion is what we see in Moscow.
He said that the officials were responsible for building local networks to support the invasion of Ukraine.
According to Soldatov, Western intelligence reports contained details on Russia's military build up. He said that the fears in the Kremlin were that the FSB may have been penetrated by foreign intelligence, allowing it to reach the West.
Military counterintelligence in Russia is looking into the activities of the fifth department of the FSB, which is basically looking for Western spies, according to Soldatov.
Lots of people in Moscow are asking themselves the question why the US intelligence was so good.
The first place to look for Western spies would be the fifth department, since it was liaison with the CIA.
The military operation is going according to plan according to the Kremlin. The claims that Russia had expected a swift victory were false, according to the spokesman for Putin. He said that Russia never intended to occupy Ukraine.
For Ruth Deyermond, an expert in post-Soviet security at Kings College London, the detaining of the FSB officers tells a different story.
Whatever the Kremlin says in public, we know that Putin can see some of the war's failures. She told Insider that it suggests that he is unwilling to take the blame for them.
It suggests that many more intelligence and military officers will be blamed if the war continues as badly as it has been. It is not clear what that will do to long-term support for him in these parts of the state.
The roots of Russia's problems are not flawed intelligence but a underestimation of Ukraine in the FSB and a reluctance to challenge Putin.
They never believed that Ukraine built a functional state. They believe that it was malfunctioning.
It is a view that Putin expressed in a speech on the eve of the invasion when he insulted the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a drug user.
It fits with Putin's assumptions because he made clear to everyone inside the secret services that he hated Ukraine from the beginning.
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