Prominent Russian military bloggers quickly rallied behind the decision The withdrawal of Russian forces from the city of Kherson and other areas on the western bank of the Dnipro River.
Shortly after reports Reuters That General Sergey Surovikin, the commander-in-chief of Russian forces in Ukraine, is under increasing pressure to produce results on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The news agency refers, among other things, to a televised session on RT last week with Margarita Simonjan, the chief editor of the state-controlled channel.
– We await your wonderful results and pray for you. I pray for you every day, Simongan said, before urging the general to ignore the critics’ “nonsense” — a reference to the influential military bloggers who expressed their displeasure with the withdrawal.
Experts: – It can have serious consequences
critical voices
One of those military bloggers, Vladlen Tatarskij, objected to the Ukrainian president’s recent visit to Kherson, asking why the Kremlin didn’t kill him.
– Symbolically, it would have been nice if Jeeran [dronetype] It landed on his stupid head, but it didn’t. why? Either we fight an honest war, or nothing will work, Tatarskij says in a video post to his nearly 500,000 followers.
Right-nationalist academic Aleksandr Dugin went further, blaming the defeat directly on Vladimir Putin.
He accused the Russian president of failing to fully embrace Russian national thought.
– The limit has been reached, he wrote in one Chronicle In the Russian tsar.
He introduced Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most famous ultra-nationalist broadcasters in Russia Live TV Moscow demands to start a full-scale war in Europe.
He complained of “serious problems coming to light” which he believed should be overcome with an “iron fist”. He explains that this includes, among other things, “firing those found incompetent” and “shooting communicators”.
Many of them have ties to the Kremlin
Despite strict media censorship, the Kremlin has allowed its ever-growing military blogging community to speak in critical terms about the regime and the war in Ukraine.
Institute for the Study of War They believe that Vladimir Putin has stopped attempts by the Russian Ministry of Defense to restrict or control several prominent bloggers.
The think tank asserts that many of them have links to the regime, and that the president has been assigned certain official roles in the Kremlin, in order to cover the nationalist circles they address.
Speaking Jacob M. Gudzimirsky, researcher on Russian foreign and security policy at Nupi, formerly The daily newspaper What at first appears to be a challenge to the regime is in fact being used to support even more brutal behavior in Ukraine.
– does not survive the loss of Crimea
– further rank in the ranks under Surovikin
The Russian withdrawal from Kherson was faster and more orderly than many Western military analysts had imagined.
It concluded that it was conducted in “relatively structured forms” compared to previous large retreats British Ministry of Defence.
– Perhaps the relative success is partly due to a unified and more efficient operational command under General Sergei Surovikin, the ministry wrote.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said recently Reuters He considers the Russian army more disciplined, after the appointment of surovkin in early october.
Alexander Paunov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Russian diplomat, believes that the general, after withdrawing from Kherson, has fulfilled half of his term, and that he is now expected to fulfill the other half.
For some, this means a new offensive that will prove that all the withdrawals were in fact a tactical maneuver. For others, it means finding a way to force Ukraine into peace talks using the following formula; Kherson city in exchange for peace, electricity, water and heating in Ukrainian cities, Paunov tells Reuters.
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