Russia’s retreat from a key Ukrainian city over the weekend elicited an outcry from an unlikely crowd — state-run media outlets that typically cast Moscow’s war in glowing terms.
A series of embarrassing military losses has presented a challenge for prominent hosts of Russian news and political talk shows struggling to find ways to paint Ukraine’s gains in a way that is still favorable to the Kremlin.
Frustration with the battlefield setbacks has long been expressed in social media blogs run by nationalist pundits and pro-Kremlin analysts, and the volume grew after Ukraine’s counteroffensive last month around Kharkiv in the northeast, but it is now spilling out on state TV broadcasts and in the pages of government-backed newspapers.
The less conciliatory tone from state-run media comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin faces widespread discontent about his partial mobilization of reservists and as government officials struggle to explain plans to annex Ukrainian regions at the same time they are being retaken by Kyiv’s forces.
“The Russian defeat in Kharkiv and Lyman, combined with the Kremlin’s failure to conduct partial mobilization effectively and fairly, are fundamentally changing the Russian information space,” Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report.
After Ukraine recaptured Lyman, a city in the east that Russian troops had used as a key logistics and transport hub, Putin’s media allies dropped the niceties and more directly criticized his military, saying tougher measures were necessary for the sake of victory.
“What happened on Saturday, Lyman — it is a serious challenge for us,” said Vladimir Solovyov, host of a prime-time talk show on state TV channel Russia 1 and one of the Kremlin’s biggest cheerleaders.
“We need to pull it together, make unpopular, but necessary decisions and act,” he said.
A story about the Lyman retreat in Russia’s popular pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda painted a bleak picture of the Russian military.
The story, published on Sunday, said that the Russian forces in Lyman were plagued by supply and manpower shortages, poor coordination and tactical mistakes orchestrated by military officials.
“It’s like it has always been,” said an unnamed soldier quoted in the story who was part of the group that retreated from Lyman to Kreminna, another strategically important city that is in the sights of the Ukrainian army. “There is effectively no communication between different units.”
Solovyov in his program on Sunday said that Moscow is “not dealing with Ukraine — we’re past that. We’re dealing with the entire NATO bloc, with the might of its military industrial complex.”
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