Joe Biden is “grumpy” these days, a White House insider shared with Newsmax.

The high-level Democrat, who has known Biden for years, said the president spends most of his White House meetings complaining about his low approval numbers, bad press, and the fact he’s not getting credit “for what’s going right.”

Notably, Biden sees Ukraine’s success in holding off Russia’s massive invasion as a major “win” for his administration, but feels he’s gotten little to no credit.

Biden is said to be so cranky about the Ukraine matter that he has moved almost all federal oversight of the Russian war from his young national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to chief of staff Ron Klain.

“This is the same thing that happened with Afghanistan, when Joe and Klain decided to control the flow and looped out State, the Pentagon and even Jake,” the insider said, noting the significant chaos that ensued as a result.

Biden is said to trust Klain, his former vice presidential chief of staff during the Obama years, “like a son.”

Klain is said to return the loyalty. Biden likes making decisions “by the gut,” the source noted, adding he sticks to those decisions even if facts and events prove him wrong.

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“But Ron’s not going to tell POTUS he’s wrong,” the source said.

Another source confirmed that Sullivan has been increasingly sidelined for several weeks from leading administration efforts on the Ukraine, arguably the most important national security issue of the day. 

The White House declined to comment on Sullivan’s status, but last week the national security adviser’s distance from Biden was confirmed obliquely.

Just over a week ago, the White House announced that Sullivan had contracted COVID-19. As for Biden’s possible infection, the White House assured the press there was no risk.

A National Security Council representative, Adrienne Watson, assured reporters that the national security adviser “is asymptomatic, and he has not been in close contact with the president.”

With multiple foreign policy issues dominating the administration, from Ukraine to Iran’s nuclear deal, China’s increasing belligerence toward Taiwan and other matters, several former national security officials from previous administrations were stunned by the White House’s admission that Sullivan had no direct, close interaction with the president.

The national security adviser’s office holds a premium spot in the West Wing near the Oval Office. One-time national security adviser Henry Kissinger noted its importance because of “the geography of power, its closeness to the president.”

National security advisers typically have daily face-to-face interaction with the president ,and they often travel with the president.

“I think the bigger problem is that, from what the White House says repeatedly, there are hardly any advisers who are ‘close contact’ to the president,” John Bolton, who served as former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, told Newsmax. “If he [Biden] really is as isolated as the press office is at pains to tell us, that is a major obstacle to effective decision-making.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the United Nations Security Council to label Russia a terrorist state after Moscow fired more than 60 missiles across Ukraine in recent days, killing scores of civilians, including at a busy shopping mall in central Ukraine. Russia is tearing through long-range weapons for tactical advantage, Western defense officials say, but so far it has made only limited battleground gains in the east, and its forces are increasingly hollowed out.

Here are some updates from across the country:

Russian President Vladimir Putin could face an assassination attempt from his inner circle if they begin to tire of the war in Ukraine, according to a former CIA official.

Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA Moscow chief of station, told The Daily Beast in an interview that if Putin’s inner circle of top advisers begin to feel on edge about the war, the Russian leader’s position could come under threat.

“Nobody’s going to ask, ‘Hey Vladimir, would you like to leave?’” Hoffmann said.

“No. It’s a f****** hammer to the head and he’s dead—or it’s time to go to the sanatorium. They schwack him for it. That’s what they’ll do.”

Hoffmann named Nikolai Patrushev, the chief of Putin’s Security Council, Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service), and Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu as three members of the Russian President’s inner circle who could potentially pose a significant risk to Putin.

“These guys that are going to [oust him] are going to be so secret about it so that Putin doesn’t find them and kill them first,” he added. “It’ll happen all of a sudden. And he’ll be dead.”

Ousting Putin ‘a danger’

Andrew Wood, an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia program and former British ambassador to Russia, told Fortune that losing the war in Ukraine “would be very dangerous” for Putin – but he added that his ousting could create huge instability in the country because “there is absolutely no mechanism for replacing him.”

“There’s no means of saying who it would be,” he said in a phone call. “And if someone replaced him, that ruler would have some ideas or different approaches that might be better or worse.”

However, he added: “This was common when [Soviet leader Joseph] Stalin was approaching his physical end. A lot of people in the West believed someone who was worse would come in after, but that wasn’t the case. Someone with different ideas did come in and produce some change.”

Ronald Marks, a former CIA clandestine service officer, told the Daily Beast that he believed Putin was safe provided that members of Russia’s elite security services remained on his side – noting that Putin has “done a nice job of getting rid of those who aren’t on his side.”

The Russian regime has a history of silencing its critics. Prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is currently incarcerated, and was denied an appeal on Tuesday for his lawyers to be permitted to bring recording equipment when they visit him in jail.

Navalny suffered a near-fatal poisoning in 2020, which UN officials believe happened by the Russian regime’s hand to send a “clear, sinister warning” to anyone wanting to criticize the government.

Russia’s crackdown on critics

Meanwhile, Russia has seen new laws come into force since the invasion of Ukraine in late February that have made it illegal to criticize the war.

Shortly after Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine, Russian media outlets were banned from referring to Moscow’s so-called “special military operation” as an “assault,” “invasion,” or “declaration of war.”

Broadcasters and news websites have faced a crackdown on their coverage of the events in Ukraine, with some of the country’s few remaining independent outlets being taken off air over their reporting on the war.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update earlier this month that, already, “some high profile Russian officials have highly likely been side-lined after criticizing the war.”

While few high-ranking Russians have publicly criticized their country’s invasion of Ukraine, some have spoken out against the war.

Oleg Tinkov, who founded one of Russia’s largest banks, was forced to sell his stake in the bank by the Kremlin after he criticized the war as “crazy” on Instagram, the New York Times reported.