To cut to the chase: what really happened in Kursk? Was the Russian Ministry of Defense caught napping? Or did they see it coming and profited to set up a deadly trap for Kiev?

Well-informed players willing to share a few nuggets on condition of anonymity all stress the extreme sensitivity of it all. An intel pro though has offered what may be interpreted as a precious clue: "It is rather surprising to see such a concentration of force was unnoticed by satellite and drone surveillance at Kursk, but I would not exaggerate its importance."

Another intel pro prefers to stress that "the foreign intel section is weak as it was very badly run." This is a direct reference to the state of affairs after former security overseer Nikolai "Yoda" Patrushev, during Putin's post-inauguration reshuffle, was transferred from his post as secretary of the Security Council to serve as a special presidential aide.

The sources, cautiously, seem to converge on a very serious possibility: "There seems to have been a breakdown in intel; they do not seem to have noticed the accumulation of troops at the Kursk border".

Another analyst though has offered a way more specific scenario, according to which a hawkish military faction, spread across the Ministry of Defense and the intel apparatus – and antagonistic to the new Minister of Defense Belousov, an economist – let the Ukrainian invasion proceed with two objectives in mind: set a trap for Kiev's top enemy commanders and troops, who were diverted from the – collapsing – Donbass front; and put extra pressure on Putin to finally go for the head of the snake and finish off the war.

This hawkish faction, incidentally, regards Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov as "totally incompetent", in the words of one intel pro. There's no smoking gun, but Gerasimov allegedly ignored several warnings about a Ukrainian buildup near the Kursk border.

A retired intel pro is even more controversial. He complains that "traitors of Russia" actually "stripped three regions from troops to surrender them to the Ukrainians." Now, these "traitors of Russia" will be able "to 'exchange' the city of Suzha for leaving the fake country of Ukraine and promote it as an inevitable solution."

Incidentally, only this Thursday Belousov started chairing a series of meetings to improve security in the "three regions" – Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.