The defeat of the Russian army by the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the counter-offensive creates a new kind of political challenge for Russian President Vladimir Putin: it undermines the image of competence and power that he worked to create for two decades. This is stated in an article by an American journalist of Russian origin Anton Troyanovsky for The New York Times..
On Sunday, the Russian military continued its retreat from positions in northeastern Ukraine that they had occupied for months.. State television reports described the retreat as a carefully planned " But such a presentation did little to alleviate the anger among supporters of the war due to the retreat at the front.. " “And in a situation where it turns out that he has no strength, his legitimacy will drop to zero.”.
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As Ukraine used its advantage Sunday to liberate cities and territories, Putin stepped up the brutality of his campaign, ceding pro-war voices on Russian television and social media, and launched rocket attacks on civilian infrastructure..
The scale of failure on the battlefield has become more apparent and there is more evidence of frustration within Russia's ruling class.. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov accused the Russian military of making "
Putin is being overtaken by his penchant for misleading his own people. The reality of Russian failure is denied by the Kremlin's message that the Russian army is invincible, Ukraine is riddled with corruption and cowardice, and Putin is a brilliant geopolitical strategist..
The first signs that disappointment could hurt Mr Putin's own prestige came when a massive fireworks display was staged in Moscow to mark the 875th anniversary of the city's founding - what some said was perhaps Russia's most humiliating day since the invasion began 24. Discontent was evident in the city, which the authorities were trying to protect from the costs of the war.. Sergei Mironov, the leader of a pro-Putin party in parliament, criticized the authorities for celebrating the annual City Day of Moscow this weekend, tweeting: “It cannot and should not be that our guys are dying today, and we pretended that nothing was happening!
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According to Russian political scientist Tatyana Stanova, the strategy of describing the war as a “special military operation” that should not affect the daily lives of most Russians is dictated by the expectation that Russia will win it quickly.. But with failure after failure, it's getting harder to hide the fact that things aren't going according to plan.. "
How much of this weekend's battlefield setbacks will hurt Putin politically will depend on his ability to reverse them.. Gallyamov, a former speechwriter, said fighting in Ukraine could spur elites around the Russian president to push for a successor.
“If they continue to destroy the Russian army as actively as they are now,” Gallyamov said of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “then all this can accelerate even faster.”.
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Recall that in a war defined for months by brutal battles between the two armies along 1,500 miles of mostly static front lines, Ukraine's astonishing speed of advance in the country's northeast changed the conflict in a matter of days.. This is how The New York Times assessed the loss of Izyum by the Russians.