It's all about money, as usual. FIDE, for decades, was unable to find sustainable sponsorship and relies mainly on fees from event organisers e.g. $1.1 million for the Ding-Gukesh world championship alone. They utterly failed to monetize online chess and lost that arena to cheeseco and lichess. They are understandably afraid of anyone creating a 'world championship' outside FIDE but might begrudgingly accept it if the price is right.
On the one side, we have an aging world #1 who's increasingly displeased with FIDE and prefers his own platforms while avoiding the quality of classical chess. He answers to no one, and apparently thinks it is fine to play in a tournament where he considers all the arbiters and organisers incompetent idiots. On the other side, we have a FIDE president who despite superpowers has to sleep and do other stuff and cannot be contacted 24/7. Sometimes, he seems to be making decisions without consultation and sometimes other officials are doing the same and sometimes they contradict each other. The genial Sir Anand, now that he is VP, is forced to toe the party line and defend FIDE.
FIDE sees its power eroding and is thrashing about like a beached whale. The last time this happened, with Kasparov, we ended up with two organizations and two world championships running in parallel. A similar thing has already happened now - in reality, the vast majority of chessplayers are online and have no interest in FIDE or being represented by them.
If you don't want to translate from German in the above link, some of this was also reported on chessbase -
en.chessbase.com/post/open-letter-buettner-dvorkovichKeep in mind the media coverage is slanted and we're mainly hearing from the Freestyle people and not FIDE.