The Russian invasion of Ukraine in recent days has produced an extraordinary barrage of criticism from supporters of the war, mainly directed at the leadership of the Russian army.
The avalanche of discontent is creating a new challenge for the president Vladimir Putinwhich, having repressed the Russian liberal opposition, now faces a growing dissent in your field.
The latest salvo came on Thursday when an official settled by Russia in an occupied region of Ukraine contempt Kremlin Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close associate of Putin.
The official, Kirill Stremousov, said Shoigu should consider commit suicide due to the failures of his army in Ukraine.
“Many people say that as an officer, the defense minister simply could To shoot himself for being the one who allowed things to come to this state, “said Stremousov, the Russian” deputy governor “of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
It was a surprisingly loud and public rebuke, based on growing frustration with the war effort.
Last month, it was largely pro-Russian bloggers who expressed anger at the failures that led to the defeat of the Russian military in northeastern Ukraine.
But after Russian troops were forced to withdraw from two other sections of the front line last week, senior officials have increasingly united. To the choir.
Andrei Kartapolov, head of the defense committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament, criticized the defense ministry for hiding bad news from the front.
Another lawmaker said members of parliament had written to the Russian attorney general asking for an investigation into the army’s supply problems.
“They have to stop lying,” said Kartapolov, who served as a senior military commander before becoming a lawmaker, on Wednesday.
“Our people are not stupid, far from it, and they see that they are not taken seriously. It is not considered necessary to tell them even a part of the truth, much less all of it ».
Shoigu, who was from vacation with Putin in Siberiahas not yet responded to criticism and Putin has not commented on Thursday.
Some of the criticisms have been directed at General Vasily Gerasimov, chief of the armed forces, as well as Shoigu.
There were signs that the criticism was part of infighting within the Russian ruling elite that was spreading openly.
It comes in the wake of a rant against the military leadership published over the weekend by Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman of the Russian southern Chechen republic and ally of Putin.
Kadyrov’s barrage seemed to open doors, especially after the Kremlin did nothing publicly to punish him for his violation of wartime discipline.
Even if none of the army’s leading pro-war critics personally attacked Putin, the Kremlin still could to lose control of the situation if Russian battlefield losses continue, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst.
“We are seeing for the first time a personified attack on each other within the regime,” said Stanovaya, the founder of R. Politik, a political analysis firm.
“This is a rather dangerous situation for Putin because nobody controls it“.
A common thread in the criticism was that the Russian army, despite the country’s huge defense budget, proved unprepared for a real war.
Many Russian hawks have been asking the military for months to step up their offensive, but are frustrated by theirs bad execution.
“So what’s the big idea of the General Staff?”
Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent state TV presenter, on his online talk show Thursday.
“Just explain it to me, dear people who have received all the necessary budgetary resources for so many years”.
During Putin’s 22 years of rule, the Kremlin has generally allowed some level of criticism of the government, seeing it as a way to vent the tension in society.
But after launching his invasion on February 24, Putin went all out silence internal dissent, forcing journalists and activists into exile and closing many of the independent media left inside Russia.
What he did not seem to have expected was that the most vocal supporters of the war would become critics of the government.
On Telegram, a social network and messaging app widely used by both Kremlin critics and supporters, war bloggers and public officials have gone from applauding Russia’s progress to increasingly complaining of the defects of the armed forces.
Mobilization
Beyond military retreats on the battlefield, pro-war bloggers have been furious at the flaws in the draft Putin announced on September 21.
The move was supposed to be a way for Putin to quickly escalate the war; instead, it became a demonstration of the Russian military’s inability to host and train an influx of new soldiers.
The chaos surrounding the mobilization has gotten to the point that even some of the Kremlin’s loudest promoters on state television have broadcast examples ofThe system went haywire.
Margarita Simonyan, director of the RT television network, and Solovyov tried to outdo each other by pointing out that some of the men recruited were among 50 and 60 yearseven though the officially announced age limit was 35.
Others have pointed out that a blind man of one eye was recruited.
The military commissioner in office in Russia’s Novosibirsk region, where multiple errors have occurred, should be sent to the front for such failures, Solovyov said.
In numerous publicized cases, citations have been withdrawn.
Putin himself admitted last week that there were problems with the mobilization, noting that some people should not have been summoned, while others with the necessary skills were rejected.
The mobilization questions are part of a larger and more unusual public debate about how the Russian military command is waging the war and how Russia might lose.
While the most common excuse is that Russia is fighting the whole covenant of NATO, the questions are closer to home.
critics
“There are real questions, you see questions in the news,” said William Alberque, director of the Berlin-based arms control program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“Who is driving us?
What is happening? Who are these donkeys?
“We have traitors among us, we must shoot them.”
Those are some of the things about tail-eating worms that are supposed to send alarm bells all over the chain.
It will be a challenge for Putin to blame someone for the problems, analysts said, because the president took over. main role in the sale of the war and kept the generals and others in command in a background.
“What are you going to do, sacrifice Shoigu or Gerasimov?” Alberto said.
“Saying your commissioners are wrong only works so far in a campaign that has been such a personal property of Putin. You didn’t see Gerasimov and Shoigu responsible for this every day. “
However, some analysts have warned against exaggerating Russia’s struggles and anticipating a collapse of the war effort.
The mobilization has just begun, they said, and if the deployment of tens of thousands of new troops to the front, however inexperienced, succeeds in slowing the Ukrainian advance or allowing Moscow to return to the offensive, it is possible it will. reviews will decrease.
“We have not seen the end of this, and it has only been two weeks since the mobilization,” said Johan Norberg, a Russian analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.
In general, however, analysts are surprised at the public level of criticism of the war and how much it is aimed at important figures.
“More blame is thrown at higher levels than I would have expected at this stage of the war,” Alberque said.
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Source: Clarin
