The ring around Putin tightens? One message caused chaos

The ring around Putin tightens? One message caused chaos

Critics who largely support Russia's invasion of Ukraine see Putin's government as the main culprit for the military's poor preparation ahead of the war, the high number of dead Russian soldiers and slow progress on the ground.

"While the Kremlin, as usual, delays and procrastinates, our respected Ukrainian colleagues destroy everything they see and can touch," wrote extreme rightist Igor Girkin on the Telegram communication platform after Ukraine used US weapons to attack Russian targets in July.

"It is obvious that the Russian military strategy is not successful," Girkin said earlier in August.

Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian separatists who wanted to annex the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass to Russia in 2014, is one of the most vocal critics of Russia's performance on the front lines in Ukraine. Analysts say Girkin and similar Kremlin critics who are urging Russia to attack Ukraine more aggressively could lay the groundwork for military service, a move Putin has so far not backed down from.

"Those commentators are saying that the Russian government is not doing enough. If Putin decides to increase Russia's military effort, they will support it, they would be happy for it to happen. In that sense, they could be useful. Putin is probably clear that mistakes have been made that cannot be denied. There has to be a place to talk about it. It's fine as long as the criticism is directed at military leaders, not politicians," said Rob Lee, a senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in the US city of Philadelphia. Russian media say Putin met behind closed doors with war correspondents in June.

The Kremlin did not respond to The Wall Street Journal's request for comment. Unlike the Kremlin, which claims that the special military operation in Ukraine is going according to plan, pro-war critics openly say that the war in Ukraine, and not a special operation, is not going according to plan.

In addition, they know how to make fun of the vague language used by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. After a series of large explosions rocked Russia's Saki Air Base on the Crimean peninsula earlier in August, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that munitions stored at the base had exploded. The ministry also announced that no plane was destroyed in the explosion and no one was injured.

Different opinions about the war

"If this was a fire, then it was a very shameful fire. Joking aside, I bet it was a cruise missile attack," wrote Russian war reporter Roman Saponkov. The popular Telegram channel "Military Reporter" published a photo of the destroyed aircraft at the Saki base and wrote about the dead and injured in the explosions.

The military reporter stated that he received this information from local officials. Later, satellite images also showed that numerous planes were destroyed in the explosions in Saka. The British Ministry of Defense announced that Russia lost eight fighter jets in the explosions, but that the exact cause of the explosions is not known.

The Telegram platform is one of only a few sources of information that Russians can easily access that offer differing opinions on the war in Ukraine. Rob Lee says that think tanks and universities are not allowed to comment on the war, and Russian state media very rarely talk about anything that could be interpreted as Russia's failure.

The experienced Russian commander in Donbas, Alexander Khodakovsky, wrote earlier in August on Telegram that he had lost five fighters in two days of open fighting and that another seven were injured. "As for the dead, I didn't lose that many in the three months of fighting for (the Ukrainian city of Mariupol)," Khodakovsky added.

More than two million people saw his post there. The Russian Defense Ministry said in March that 1.351 Russian soldiers had died in the war in Ukraine and has not updated that figure since.

The United States Department of Defense believes that perhaps as many as 80.000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded during the invasion of Ukraine. Khodakovsky said that so far Russia has received relatively modest gains in exchange for a large number of dead soldiers. This failure is blamed on the military leadership and the way in which decisions are made and the speed with which the necessary weapons are delivered to the troops. VSJ could not get Khodakovsky to comment on his statements.

Criticism of the Kremlin from pro-war and pro-Russian commentators intensified in July as the Russian offensive in the Donbass slowed considerably. Pro-war commentators were shocked by the fact that the Ukrainians began attacking Russian forces and positions with US HIMARS missile systems and other precision weapons.

"The Western artillery system surprised us with the range, precision and variety of ammunition," Russian state television correspondent Alexander Sladkov, who has 900.000 followers on that platform, wrote in Telegram on August 2. Sladkov did not want to comment on his statements for VSJ.

What is allowed to Girkin, is not allowed to others

Girkin has established himself as the harshest critic of the Kremlin, whom he blames for not adequately supporting his initiative to separate the region from Ukraine in 2014. After the Ukrainians attacked the Russians with HIMARS missile launchers, Girkin said that the Russian military leadership, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, should be severely punished.

"If I were Putin, they probably wouldn't get away with just going to the shooting range," Girkin said last month in a video he posted on his Telegram channel. Girkin even criticized Putin himself, which has proven to be a not very wise move over the years. Girkin said he could not remain silent because he wanted to help Russia achieve its goals.

A Dutch court has linked Girkin and three other people to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and the killing of 298 people on board at the time. He denies these accusations. Girkin is a former reservist of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation who harbors monarchist and imperialist views, heads the Russian nationalist organization New Russia Movement, which advocates the expansion of the Federation to the Donbass and other areas in order to unify the Russian people.

His Telegram channel currently has 430 thousand followers. Before the war, he had 15 thousand of them. Girkin also condemned the Russian military for attacking civilians in Ukraine. Proponents of the war are of crucial importance to Western analysts, because they bring them valuable information and audiovisual materials from the field and because they repeat what the Russian Ministry of Defense says.

"Sometimes, when I read what Girkin writes, I feel like I'm reading my own analysis," Katerina Stepanenko, an expert on Russian issues at the Institute for the Study of War in the American capital, Washington, told VSJ. Military bloggers also give frontline soldiers a chance to complain about the state of the military and the decisions of their superiors.

On August 15, the blog Ribar (Fisherman) published a letter on its Telegram channel that it said was sent to them by a Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine. In it, the soldier complains that he does not have access to modern equipment and that most units only have old armored vehicles at their disposal, which often break down and are of poor quality.

Analysts say the only criticism the Russian government tolerates is that of a narrow circle of pro-war bloggers. Although Russia recently passed a law banning criticism of the Russian military, Girkin and others like him have never been censored under the law's provisions. At the same time, Putin's government prosecuted thousands of others who criticized the war.