When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in early 2022 he anticipated the nation to cave inside weeks.

Fast-forward 12 months and issues could not have gone extra in another way.

The worldwide neighborhood has thrown its weight behind Kyiv, offering it with an entire array of navy tools, and volunteer teams from all over the world have travelled to the nation to take up arms in opposition to the invading forces.

Now, Dr Katherine Kelaidis, Director of Research and Content on the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, says Putin is greater than conscious that his battle goes south and is doing all the pieces he can to woo the Russian public.

Reports initially recommended that Russia's navy prime brass could also be hiding the failures of the nation's navy from Putin.

READ MORE: The subtle clue Putin wants to take Russia back to 1916 as he 'acts like a king'

It is now clear that he is aware of concerning the a number of shortcomings of his forces, exemplified by the video rants recorded by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Putin has now began to distract away from battlefield failures by varied acts, including moving an icon from a state museum to the Russian Orthodox Church.

In doing so, Dr Kelaidis stated the Russian President hopes to painting himself as a "pious tsar, as a pious king, who does his Christian duty and services to the church".

She continued: "This is significant: Putin is in trouble. The war is not going well for Putin, it's certainly not going the way he envisaged it.

"I believe that requires him to amp up the rhetoric and all these symbolic restorative strikes, as a result of precise victory on the battlefield — the place you are presupposed to win — that is not taking place."

Putin has made multiple attempts to take public attention away from the reality of the war by rousing national and patriotic feelings.

In February, addressing the Russian folks, he described the battle as a battle to “defend the homeland” in opposition to the US and Europe.

In what was his first nationwide deal with since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he stated: "Russia will reply to any challenges as a result of we're all one nation, one huge and united folks".

The speech lasted 50 minutes, and saw Putin refer to Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenksy as a "neo-Nazi" — despite his Jewish heritage — and claim that the US and Europe “plan to grow a local conflict into a global confrontation” by supporting Ukraine, which “represents an existential threat to our country”.

This week, Putin was blamed for the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam near Kherson.

The dam, inside Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine, seemed to be disintegrating within the days earlier than it absolutely burst, but reports suggest the structure was blown up.

At an emergency session of the UN Security Council, Russia sought to pin the blame on Ukraine.

But Ukraine's envoy to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, stated it was typical of Russia in charge the sufferer for its personal crimes.

He identified that Russia had been in control of the dam for more than a year, and that it would be impossible to destroy it through shelling.

Claiming that the dam was mined by the Russian occupiers who then blew it up, he said: "By resorting to scorched earth ways, or on this case to flooded earth ways, the Russian occupiers have successfully recognised that the captured territory doesn't belong to them, and they don't seem to be capable of maintain these lands."