Russian pro-war activists over the weekend voiced their harshest criticisms of military action in Ukraine to date, following the humiliating retreat of Russian troops from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.
By Sunday, the doubling of complaints broke the taboo against President Vladimir Putin himself and Russia’s system of government.
Alexander Dugin, the right-wing ideologue whose concept of the “Russian world” helped inspire the war, wrote online that an autocratic leader’s main job is to protect the people and the land under his control.
“The Russian authorities cannot hand over anything else,” Dugin wrote.
“It has been reached the limit”.
I was hardly alone.
Other social media posts questioned the authenticity of a September referendum in Kherson when Russia said the population had voted overwhelmingly to join that country.
The results of the referendum contrasted sharply with the jubilant crowds who welcomed Ukrainian soldiers as liberators on Friday.
The Communist Party faction in the Duma, the Russian parliament, which rarely challenges the Kremlin, has proposed calling for a Explanation Ministry of Defense for ordering a withdrawal from Kherson, but the United Russia faction in Putin’s government torpedoed that proposal.
Some analysts suggest that the stream of criticisms indicate that Putin he failed to distance himself of the repeated setbacks of the war, but that volume had not yet been a real brake.
“Things are definitely getting worse for Putin, but it’s hard to know how far because he has crossed so many lines and has still been able to keep control of his inner circle and those who matter,” said Maxim Trudolyubov, analyst politician and former newspaper editor, now living in exile.
“So far they have been successful in the damage control”.
Senior Russian officials and state media have argued that the Kherson withdrawal was a temporary tactical measure and that Russia’s annexation of the territory, a move condemned as illegal by Ukraine and the West, still stands.
Some of the harshest criticism of the military comes from social media accounts linked to the Wagner groupa mercenary army whose founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, criticized the generals.
The military may be inclined dismiss criticism as an attempt to make them look bad. Wagner, in general, advocates more violence in response to any setbacks.
The loss of control over Kherson, the only regional capital Russian forces had captured since the February invasion, was clearly galling.
Dugin’s post, which appeared on the website of the Tsargrad television network, owned by a right-wing tycoon who advocates the restoration of a tsar, suggested that the Kremlin was failing because it was based on public relations rather than an outright commitment to the “Russian Idea”.
The post didn’t name Putin directly, but referenced a study of myths and religions that included the African story of the Rain Kings, killed for failing to make rain amid a drought.
Dugin later wrote on his Vkontakte page, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, that Western analysts were falsely portraying him as turning against Putin.
Dugin’s daughter Daria, an ultranationalist who echoed his thinking, was killed in a car bomb in an affluent Moscow suburb in August.
Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack and US intelligence agencies also said they believed parts of the Ukrainian government had authorized the attack.
Doubters of what the Kremlin has dubbed the “Kherson maneuver” have invoked both history and strategy to criticize it.
The Kremlin tries to draw endless historical parallels between the war in Ukraine and the key role played by the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany, but one publication wrote that the surrender of Kherson it was not up to par of that legacy.
Oleg Pakholkov, editor-in-chief of bloknota southern regional outlet, noted that the defenders of Stalingrad had the option of falling back to the other side of the Volga River, but they did not do so to “break the enemy and crush him and show the world that we can.”
“Kherson’s surrender says otherwise,” he wrote.
“So soon those who took Kherson will come to other places. It seems we have nothing to stop them with.
Some commentators wondered aloud why Russia wasn’t using its nuclear arsenal and why the Russian military wasn’t bombing routes in western Ukraine used to import US and European military supplies.
While it is a crime to directly question the war or the military, Putin has so far been tolerant of right-wing fanatics who have criticized Russia for not fighting hard enough.
However, even those charged with selling the official line, that the withdrawal was only a ploy and that Russia would return, found it difficult to explain to Kherson.
Vladimir Solovyov, a leading Kremlin entertainer on state television, swung between anger and frustration on his various talk shows.
One minute he was blaming the West for arming Ukraine and the next he was criticizing Ukraine incompetence and cowardice of some Russians who refused to fight.
Rybar, a popular TV channel Telegramhe suggested that state television would try to “soften the bitter pill” by saying that history would eventually correct the situation in Russia’s favor.
“In the eyes of the population, this is a defeat,” he wrote.
“It is the loss of territories that the Russian Federation has recognized as its own.”
Kherson was one of four regions Russia annexed in September, though it didn’t fully control them.
Some critics have taken the opportunity to raise questions about a system that has given so much authority to one man.
“His decisions are not in question,” an editorial in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper, said of Putin.
“Therefore, himself can’t be wrong because there is no mechanism to correct them.
A leader who admits a mistake lowers his status, which brings his qualities into question.
The owner and editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Konstantin Remchukov, is a member of the Russian establishment.
That thought was echoed in a Telegram post on a channel generally sympathetic to the government’s line.
In this case, he suggested that the Russian system would defeat any attempts to dismantle it.
“The Russian system, along with cockroaches, is also one of the toughest organisms on earth, we are sure, it could survive nuclear war,” the post said.
“Actually, it is a continuation of the Soviet system, which has betrayed its country, has accepted it destruction and dismemberment in 1991 to survive.”
Strengthening the system is one of the reasons most concentrated among right-wing military bloggers and other war advocates, analysts said, while people with Kremlin ties are less likely to openly question Putin’s role during a war that started Russia.
“They have built a big lie and they need to live this big lie,” Trudolyubov said.
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Source: Clarin
