For a long time, public criticism of Putin in Russia seemed unimaginable. But on the Russian President's birthday of all days, the Kremlin allows state television to report critically on mistakes made during the war. According to one report, the situation is so bad that it is no longer possible to lie.
According to a media report, with its troops losing ground almost daily, the Kremlin is instructing some of its state media to admit some mistakes in President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin fears that its tirelessly optimistic propaganda could stir up public doubts, writes the news portal "Bloomberg", among others.
After months of reporting practically only successes on the battlefield, state television has recently reported Russia's retreats and defeats - without the usual positive portrayal of the Ministry of Defense. "We have to stop lying," Andrei Kartapolov, a former general who now heads the defense committee in the lower house of parliament, said on a popular online talk show this week. "Our people are not stupid."
Questions to Putin or his decision to invade Ukraine are not permitted, the report says. Since it does not currently appear that the Russian army will have anything to oppose the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the near future, one hopes that the reporting will generate growing support from the population.
The new approach is also reflected at the highest level. The president has held at least two closed-door meetings with a small group of Russian military correspondents since early summer, including one just before last month's sudden decision to order 300,000 reservists to be called up, according to people familiar with the situation.
The sudden eruption of criticism on state television of military action in the war could justify calls by the Russian elite for more indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R.Politik research group. "There is a big debate in the ruling class about how to win this war now that the army has shown it is incapable," she said. "There is a hunt for those responsible and efforts to get Putin to look for other solutions."
At their last meeting with Putin, the war correspondents, known for their nationalist views and skepticism about the military, appeared to paint a bleak picture of the situation on the front lines. In just a few weeks, Ukrainian forces had invaded large areas that Russian troops had been fighting for months to occupy. Some have therefore questioned whether Putin received a full account of the actual situation at his official briefings.
