On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat alone at a desk in his residence outside Moscow.

Nearly 11 months after he invaded Ukraine, he was hosting a virtual meeting with Russian

officials about the state of the economy.

Putin said that Russia has weathered Western sanctions better than experts predicted.

The statement is baffling experts, in part because it's difficult to know what is actually happening inside Russia's borders.

Catherine Belton covers Russia for the post.

It's not really clear what he's talking about because no one really knows what actually the rubles value is anymore.

It's being artificially set by the central bank, so essentially we're in the land of funny money.

And as sanctions continue to cut off Russia from the world economy, Russia's failing war in Ukraine has isolated Putin more than ever to.

Catherine says the war has fractured his support among the Russian elite and has made Putin paranoid.

There are rumors that he's spending a lot of time in bunker facilities, but that's unfortunately impossible to corroborate.

He does venture out, but he's always surrounded by a very closely kind of checked group of people who he believes aren't going to pose a risk to him.

From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.

I'm Martine Powers. It's Wednesday, January 18th. Today, how Putin has cut himself off from the rest of the world, and what that means for his political future.

So Catherine, I want to start off by asking about news from over the weekend.

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in a city in central Ukraine called Nipro, and dozens of civilians died.

Can you give us some context about how this attack fits into Russia's military strategy at this point, and what that tells us about Putin right now?

Well, Russia of course denies any responsibility for that horrific attack on the apartment building, trying to suggest that they weren't behind it.

But we've seen time, and again, Russia sent missiles into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, and as its missiles run out, they're using less and less precise missiles.

So it looks very likely that they were using a missile, which really barely has any guidance systems left, and it caused this terrible tragedy.

And Putin really has been using what remains of his windling stockpile of missiles to try and beat Ukraine into submission.

We've seen throughout the winter him pounding Ukrainian power stations, trying to and succeeding in cutting off Ukrainian electricity supplies.

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