![]() The whole problem is not on the ground, but, where they still do not understand, they still do not own the situation." "The problem is a basic lie, a report of a good situation. ![]() "I don't understand why they didn't correctly assess the situation all the time, didn't strengthen the group," he was quoted as saying. The paper also quoted an incredulous Andrei Gurulyov, a former general and commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army who is now a lawmaker in the the lower house of parliament. Under a headline reading "The Surrender of Lyman Has Become A Political Problem," the newspaper Nezavisimaya gazeta published a column on October 2 that said, "for the first time since the start of the special military operation, army commanders are openly named in comments, allegedly guilty of problems arising at the front." Taking Aim At The United States, Putin Casts Ukraine War As An Existential Conflict For Russia He also ripped into the top commander of the Central Military District, Colonel General Aleksandr Lapin, and even Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom Girkin has repeatedly derided as a "plywood marshal." On October 2, a day after the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the withdrawal from Lyman, Girkin posted a photograph of General Valery Gerasimov, the head of the armed forces' General Staff - and lambasted him. Prior to Putin’s September 21 announcement of a "partial" mobilization, Igor Girkin, a notorious former intelligence officer who played an instrumental role when war first erupted in the Donbas in 2014, had been an outspoken critic of the Russian military for weeks, and had also spent weeks calling for Putin to order a full mobilization. The Kremlin shuffled several top officers, reorganized the command structure, and even dismissed several commanders. Even after Russian forces failed to capture Kyiv in the early weeks of the invasion, thwarted by Ukrainian defenses, Russian commanders and bloggers characterized the withdrawal and shifting of forces to the Donbas - the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - as merely a tactical decision. Inside Russia, discussions of the military's early setbacks in Ukraine have been muted. 'Send All These Bastards.Barefoot To The Front' The result has been a flood of information, criticism, and discussion, including about how badly the war is going for Russian forces.Īnd pro-Russian military bloggers have taken full advantage. The messaging app Telegram, however, has remained uncensored by Russian regulators. Even Internet resources and social-media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and VK have been censored or brought to heel. That dovetailed with the closure of some of the country's best-known independent outlets, like the Ekho Moskvy radio station and the newspaper Novaya gazeta. After the February 24 invasion, he signed legislation that in many cases criminalizes independent reporting on the war, as well as criticism and dissent, by outlawing "discrediting the armed forces." Over the 23 years Putin has been in power, Russia's once freewheeling media has been squeezed into submission. "I personally think.the Russian elite has never been as at risk of collapse quite frankly than it is now." "The problem is Putin's grip in all sorts of ways is too strong for people to mobilize and consolidate and form an alliance, to move against him," he told RFE/RL. "But obviously, there is increasing discontent in the upper Russian echelons about the course of the war, and that is being manifested in various ways, people can’t hold it in." If there were one, we'd almost be the last ones to know about it, these things happen pretty swiftly when they do," said James Nixey, who heads the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London. "I wouldn't predict a palace coup imminently. That's a serious problem for Russia's military brass - and potentially for the Kremlin. ![]() Now with the Ukrainians' weekend victory in Lyman, a Donetsk region city and strategic rail hub southeast of Kharkiv, that criticism is bursting into wider public view, hitting the front pages of some of Russia's biggest newspapers. For weeks now, on the uncensored Telegram channels of hard-line nationalists and Russian military bloggers, there's been a litany of angry criticism of Russia's military commanders amid a stunning Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and elsewhere resulting in substantial Russian losses.
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