Kremlin backers openly target Russia’s generals for battlefield setbacks

As Russian troops continued their retreat in southeastern Ukraine, the Kremlin-appointed “governor” of the Russian-occupied Kherson region made a suggestion to Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

“A lot of people are saying that a defence minister who let things get to this state could shoot himself, like an officer,” Kirill Stremousov said on Thursday.

Later that day on Russian state television, prominent Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Soloviev had many questions for his country’s military leadership. “Please explain to me what the general staff’s genius idea is now. Do you think time is on our side? They’ve hugely increased their amount of weapons . . . But what have you done in that time?”

After a seven-month poorly run military campaign, Russia’s state media, pro-Kremlin lawmakers and other supporters of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine have ramped up their public criticism of the army and its leading figures. The open swipes spilling even from Russian officials such as Stremousov, rare even before the war, is even more remarkable now when a law on “discrediting the armed forces” carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

That such criticism has gone unpunished indicates the Kremlin is tacitly approving it and is looking for a way out of an increasingly dire situation on the frontline, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R. Politik.

“We’re at the point where the elite is dealing with the question of how to win the war,” Stanovaya said. “Nobody’s casting any doubt on the war itself, but on how to win, what methods to use, which tactics, and which people are going to lead the campaign. The Kremlin has let the elite know the taboo on criticising the defence ministry and the troops has gone,” she added.

As the war drags on and Ukraine continues to push Russia’s troops back, the rosy picture painted by the defence ministry’s briefings has become difficult to sustain.

At the start of the conflict, the ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that Russia destroyed more Turkish-made TB2 drones than Ukraine had ever deployed and trumpeted the supposed capture of more than two dozen villages multiple times.

The optimism rubbed off on Putin, who insisted the “special operation” was going according to plan.

Since September, when Ukrainian forces liberated large swaths of territory in the eastern Kharkiv region, the realities on the ground have become impossible to ignore.

The cry was first sounded on Telegram — the social media app that serves as a test kitchen for the Kremlin’s narratives — by war correspondents embedded on the front lines.

Though they support Russia’s efforts to win the war, the reporters have become influential in their own right. A group of them met Putin in June, while some attended a lavish ceremony in the Kremlin last week that marked the unilateral annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

The euphoria around the annexation, however, lasted less than 24 hours before Ukraine captured the key town of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region — Putin had lost what he had just declared new Russian territory.

Now war correspondents blame the defence ministry for not being honest enough about its shortcomings and the difficulties it faced on the battlefield.

“We need to do something with the system where the bosses don’t like to hear bad news and their subordinates don’t like to upset them,” Alexander Kots, a war reporter for pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, wrote on Telegram.

Ramzan Kadyrov echoed the criticism by accusing a leading general of botching the defence of Lyman. The army’s top brass was lying to Putin about how badly the war effort was going, Chechnya’s strongman said.

Kadyrov, who has deployed Chechen forces in Ukraine and this week was made an army general by Putin, was endorsed by Evgeny Prigozhin, who after years of denying it, has now admitted to running the Wagner paramilitary group. Prigozhin, dubbed Putin’s chef, has been recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine.

The attacks on the military leadership indicate a jostling for power as irregular forces like Kadyrov’s Chechens and Wagner seek to grow their influence at the army’s expense, said Pavel Luzin, an independent Russian military analyst.

“They’re looking for people to blame. The army is worn down, weak, getting weaker, and gradually turning into an irregular military force,” Luzin said. “And the Kremlin is scared of its own soldiers. That’s why everyone who’s directly involved in the war, but doesn’t serve in the army, is trying to blame the army for the defeat.”

The military setbacks are unlikely to prompt Russia’s security services to abandon the war effort, despite their misgivings, according to a former security services officer.

“My former colleagues might not have liked it in the beginning. But now all they care about is whether we win. Starting the war was bad enough, but if we lose it’ll be even worse,” the officer said.

One possible response is for Russia’s army to escalate by attacking Ukrainian critical infrastructure, a longtime demand of the war correspondents on Telegram. Kadyrov suggested using tactical nuclear weapons last week.

“You can explain to people that we’re at war and they attacked us. Nobody will remember how it started. The longer this goes on, the fewer people will care about that,” the former security services officer said. “Ordinary people will think it was justified.”

But the officials in charge of the war at all levels will struggle to find good answers for Putin, Stanovaya said. “This is very destructive for the regime,” she said. “The problem hasn’t changed: how can Russia win the war and at what cost? And that question scares everyone equally, because there’s no answer.”