What does one give as a 70th birthday present for the modern day Russian despot who already has a great wardrobe and an oversupply of delusion? If a new American intelligence dispatch is to be believed, Vladimir Putin’s 70th was marked by an open revolt inside the Kremlin.

As first reported by the Washington Post, an as yet unnamed member of Mr. Putin’s inner circle has confronted him directly over his mistakes and botched management of his war on Ukraine. The individual was named in President Biden’s daily intelligence briefing. 

Cracks in the Kremlin’s control of the “special military operation,” as Russians are obliged to call the war in Ukraine, are appearing virtually everywhere. The Post reported that a Western intelligence official said that our assessments “suggest” that Mr. Putin’s closest aides and advisers “are particularly exercised by recent Russian losses, misguided direction and extensive military shortcomings.”

Discord in the nerve center of the Russian government coupled with its international isolation — to say nothing of one battlefield humiliation after another, the latest being apparent sabotage of a key bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea  — may be one reason that celebrations for Mr. Putin’s 70th birthday were subdued.

There were, unlike in the past, no dashes overseas, hikes in Siberia with the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, or celebrity hockey games. Reports that Mr. Putin was whiling away the hours in a nuclear bunker were apocryphal at best, as leaders from a gaggle of countries including Belarus and Uzbekistan feted his birthday at St. Petersburg’s Czarist-era Konstanin Palace.

There, the Belarussian president, Alexander Lukashenko, gave his Russian counterpart a gift certificate for a tractor. The BBC’s Moscow bureau chief, Will Vernon, reported that the  president of Tajikistan gave Putin a selection of melons and watermelons, each artfully displayed in pyramid form.

It was not clear if Mr. Putin took time from beholding the sight of all that fruit to make a detour to Sergienko Art Gallery, where on the occasion of the president’s birthday an artist debuted an oversized rendition of an earlier version of a painting called “Putin With a Puppy.”

The artist, Alexei Sergienko, told  the Russian newspaper Spbdnevnik,  “In my works, I portrayed Vladimir Putin as the hero of simple human stories — with a dog in his arms, feeding a calf, riding a bicycle, with his family, shedding a tear after winning the election.” Mr. Sergienko depicts Mr. Putin clutching what appears to be a small St. Bernard (nota bene, Mr. Putin’s girlfriend is reportedly holed up in Switzerland) against a background of daisies. 

Just in time for Mr. Putin’s birthday, the British defense ministry reported today that since the invasion he launched on February 24, Ukraine’s Armed Forces have captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and 650 other armored vehicles, which make up “over half of Ukraine’s currently fielded tank fleet.”

The report said that “the failure of Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering highlights their poor state of training and low levels of battle discipline,”adding that Russian troops are “increasingly demoralized.” 

Hundreds of thousands of able-bodied young Russians are dodging the draft — or “partial mobilization.” Some countries such as, say,  Finland have effectively sealed the border, and not everyone can drive to Kazakhstan or  is able to rustle up the rubles it takes to buy a one-way ticket to Istanbul.

Some are grabbing boats and praying they arrive in Alaska in one piece. Two fellows just did. The BBC reported that a pair of Russian nationals were detained by American officials after arriving in a small boat at St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, which is in the Bering Sea.

That island, America’s sixth largest, is just 36 miles from Russia’s Chukchi Peninsula, which positions it closer to the Russian Federation than to the Alaskan mainland. But it is still a perilous and frosty crossing. The asylum-seeking duo actually set sail from Egvekinot in northeastern Russia to the island, which is a 300-mile journey.  The Department of Homeland Security arranged for the men to be flown to Anchorage for “vetting and screening.”

In a press statement Alaska’s junior senator, Dan Sullivan, reckons that “this incident makes two things clear: First, the Russian people don’t want to fight Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Second, given Alaska’s proximity to Russia, our state has a vital role to play in securing America’s national security.” 

The Bering Sea “miracle” reminds of something that Alaska’s former governor, Sarah Palin, said in 2014, shortly after Russia invaded Crimea. In a Facebook post, she evoked an earlier prediction: “After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.” Roger that.