Toy soldiers open golden doors. Rows of apparatchiks dutifully applaud. President Putin celebrates his seizure of four Ukrainian regions, leading to televised chants of ‘Forever! Forever!’

In time for the tsar’s 70th birthday Friday, Kremlin courtiers and choreographers slavishly presented him with four Ukrainians regions on a platter.

Kremlin ceremonies take place in airtight bubbles. There is no rude little boy to pop the balloon by shouting, “The Emperor has no clothes!” But, in the real world, 800 miles to the south, Russia’s front lines are crumbling and Mr. Putin’s troops are surrendering or fleeing.

Like King Canute trying to stop the tide in the English Channel, Russia’s tsar is claiming ownership of areas he does not control. Even his own spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, admits that the boundaries of Russia’s “new lands” are not defined.

An adviser to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweets: “The Kremlin hesitates to announce ‘new borders’ because ‘Russian territory’ becomes smaller and smaller daily.”

Ukraine’s birthday present to the Russian leader came a few hours later. Early Saturday, a truck bomb severely damaged the 12-mile, $3 billion bridge connecting the Russian mainland and the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.

Four years ago, Putin drove a truck across the bridge, inaugurating what Russian TV called the longest bridge in Europe. Ukrainian National Security Council head Oleksiy Danilov posted footage of the explosion — with a video of Marilyn Monroe singing, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” 

In the big picture, seven months of war have shredded the international image of Russia’s Army and military hardware. The operational strength of the Army may have been cut in half. 

Seven months after Mr. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, his army has lost 7,000 major pieces of equipment — largely tanks and armored personnel carriers — and 100,000 dead or wounded soldiers.

Over the last two weeks, a deeply unpopular draft has prompted as many as 700,000 Russian men to flee the country, Forbes Russia reports, citing “Kremlin sources.” Kazakhstan alone has received 200,000 draft dodgers. 

In the most daring escape, two young men crossed the Bering Strait this week in a small boat, landing at a remote Alaskan island, Senator Murkowski said Thursday.

Judging by increasingly jittery comments, Russia’s elite seem to sense a military defeat on the horizon. Their comments seem to signal the start of a ‘fin de regime’ era.

In Dagestan, a poor Russian region wracked by anti-draft protests, Governor Sergei Melikhov berated local draft officers on television, shouting: “Are you f****** morons?”

Increasingly, finger pointing and scapegoating turns to the military’s top brass. Although Mr. Putin has taken direct command of his ‘special operation,’ criticism always stops short of the President.

Margarita Simonyan, Mr. Putin’s cheerleader-in-chief and editor of Kremlin-funded news network RT, begged the military on state TV: “All I’m asking, comrade generals, is for you not to shame our anthem, our faith, our desperation to keep these people and territories with us — and return to normal as an even bigger Russia.”

But, the Russian-installed deputy head of the annexed part of Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, seemed to suggest this week that the Russian Defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, should shoot himself. 

As Ukrainian forces steadily approach Kherson’s regional capital, Mr. Stremousov said in an emotional video address: “Many say: if they were a defense minister who had allowed such a state of affairs, they could, as officers, have shot themselves.”

Mr. Shoigu, one of Mr. Putin’s closest allies, has held the post for a decade. In the past, he and Mr. Putin have regularly holidayed together in the forests and mountains of Mr. Shoigu’s native Tuva Republic. Tempering his comments, Mr. Stremousov added: “The Ministry of Defense does not consist only of ministers, generals, corrupt looters and other various scum, but all those heroes who gave their lives to defend Russia.”

The head of the Duma’s Defense Committee, Andrei Kartapolov, excoriated the Defense Ministry for covering up bad news from the front. “They need to stop lying,” he told state TV host Vladimir Solovyov. “Our people aren’t stupid. Far from it. And they see that they are not being taken seriously. It’s not being considered necessary to tell them even part of the truth, let alone all of it.”

After Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a key rail hub, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that the local Russian commander should be stripped of his medals and sent to the front line with a gun to wash away his shame with blood. 

Mr. Kadyrov, who has sent his teenage sons to fight with Chechen units in Ukraine, said of Russia’s Army: “Nepotism in the army will lead to no good.”

“Ramzan – you rock man!” responded Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close Putin ally and founder of the Wagner Group of mercenaries. “All these bastards should be sent barefoot to the front with automatic guns.” Mr. Prigozhin has recruited Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.

But, Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian and Ukraine expert, speculates that Mr. Kadyrov and Mr. Prigozhin are keeping their private militias intact, possibly to prepare for a post-Putin power struggle. 

“Prigozhin and Kadyrov are calling for an intensification of the war, and mocking the Russian high command in the most aggressive possible tone, but meanwhile they seem to be protecting their own men,” Prof. Snyder writes. “Russian conventional defeat in Ukraine is merging imperceptibly into a Russian power struggle.”

In Kyiv, President Zelensky signed a decree Tuesday barring any peace talks with Russia until Putin is removed from office. Russia watchers say that after 23 years in power, Mr. Putin on his 70th birthday may be seeing the ground moving under his feet.

“The spiders in the closed jar have started working to find the culprit,” tweets Zelensky adviser Podolyak. “Someone won’t make it out alive.”