A former advisor to the Russian president says he couldn’t even listen to Vladimir Putin’s address to the nation Monday night. He had to read it after the fact.

“This is the speech of a delusional person who is no longer connected with the surrounding reality,” Gleb Pavlovsky told Fox News…

“If you compare the decision of the Politburo with Brezhnev about Afghanistan and the introduction of troops back then, there were more discussions. Then people argued and expressed doubts, and here you’ve got a bunch of mannequins and these are the people responsible for security. It’s disgusting.” Pavlovsky says he blames the security chiefs as much as Putin for taking a path that may in fact make Russia much less secure when the argument has been all along that Russia simply needs its security concerns properly addressed, and if that is sorted out, then all will be alright.

Pavlovsky said “nobody would have been killed” for questioning Putin about his controversial and provocative decision to recognize parts of Ukraine as independent entities or playing devil’s advocate. He sensed that some of them, in fact, the real security men in the room, had serious reservations.