Zelenskyy predicts Vladimir Putin will be toppled by his own people. They will 'find a reason to kill the killer,' said Ukraine's president

• Zelenskyy said that he believed his own people would eventually topple Vladimir Putin.
• He said that eventually, they would turn on him and "will find a reason to kill the killer."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated he believed his opponent Vladimir Putin would eventually be toppled by people from within Russia's political regime.

"There will certainly be a moment when the fragility of Putin's regime is felt in Russia," Zelenskyy told journalist Dmytro Komarov in a new documentary.

"Then carnivores will eat the carnivore. It is very important, and they will need a reason to justify this. They will recall the words of Komarov, of Zelenskyy. They will remember. They will find a reason to kill the killer," he says, per a translation by Ukrayinska Pravda.

"Will it work? Yes. When? I don't know," he said.

The Ukrainian president sat down for an extended interview for the documentary, which was made to mark one year since Russia invaded Ukraine.

A year after the war began, Russia has not had the expected swift victory and instead faced battlefield humiliations and heavy casualties.

Russia has faced stringent international sanctions over the invasion and has become increasingly isolated on the world stage.

The untrusting Russian leader is known to rely mainly on his close inner circle of advisers and confidants, but The Washington Post reported in December that there is increasingly a gulf between Putin and the country's elite.

"There is huge frustration among the people around him," a Russian billionaire with contacts with top-ranking officials told the paper. "He clearly doesn't know what to do."

"He is in isolation, of course. He doesn't like speaking with people anyway. He has a very narrow circle, and now it has gotten narrower still," he said.

One member of Putin's inner circle even voiced disagreement directly to him over his handling of the war, The Washington Post reported in October, according to information obtained by US intelligence.

Putin has also faced discontent within the country over drafting the country's military reservists, with thousands of fighting-age men fleeing the country and people taking to the streets to protest against the move.

Although denouncing the war is illegal in Russia, there have been rare moments of dissent, and Russia's military bloggers have started openly criticizing Moscow's military leadership.

This week a Russian lawmaker appeared to mock Putin by watching his speech with noodles hung on his ears, in reference to a Russian idiom meaning to tell lies.

Despite any murmurs of dissent, experts have previously said the Russian leader has made his regime "coup-proof" through a culture of distrust among Russia's intelligence agencies.