Nearly three months into Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, amid skyrocketing prices at home and potentially decades of economic gains lost, the Kremlin insists its war will “make life better” for ordinary Russians.
“We are in fact now living in the conditions of a perfect storm and the moment of truth, that very storm and moment of truth that will ensure and protect our interests, and make it so that your lives are better, more comfortable, more stable, and more secure,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
Speaking at the “New Horizons” education marathon, Peskov insisted that “our president knows where he is leading our country,” and that “the whole country supports him.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The Kremlin, he said, is “confident that we will win and achieve all our goals”—a jarring claim after Russian forces have repeatedly been forced to retreat from what they believed would be a quick victory in Ukraine, and ordinary Russians have been forced to bear the brunt of the economic fallout.
The war that the Kremlin has depicted as a heroic crusade against nonexistent neo-Nazi leaders in Ukraine has led to hundreds of foreign companies cutting ties with Russia, killed as many as 27,000 Russian troops, and, according to Ukrainian intelligence, left Putin’s military in shambles.
A slew of Russian commanders are said to have been punished as Moscow’s military losses piled up, with Lt. Gen. Vladislav Yershov, the commander of the 6th Combined Arms Army, reportedly sidelined over “unprecedented losses of personnel, weapons, and military equipment.”
At least six commanders total have reportedly been dismissed for similar reasons, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate said Tuesday. Some of them are said to have been arrested, including Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, who commanded the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship Moskva, which famously sank at the hands of Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles (though the Kremlin desperately tried to claim an accidental fire on board was to blame).
And according to Western intelligence officials cited by The Guardian on Monday, Putin himself has been at the helm of military decision-making during many of the country’s most humiliating setbacks.
“We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier,” said a military source cited by the news outlet.
The Russian leader is even said to have been involved in mapping out movements for troops in the Donbas, where an entire Russian battalion was wiped out last week as they repeatedly tried to cross a strategic river in the Luhansk region.
Putin’s role in military strategy has apparently not stopped his own troops from shit-talking his war. Ukraine’s Security Service has routinely released audio recordings of what it says are intercepted communications between Russian troops, and in the latest, a purported soldier can be heard mocking the idea of Russia’s military as a “great power.”
“We’re fucking sitting ducks,” he said, explaining that Russian troops have been forced to rely on family members back home and “sponsors” like farmers to send them equipment.
“This fucking army… mucked up this special operation,” he said, calling it “fucked up politics.”
