Is Russian TV starting to “cheat” Putin? – Holy

“Things are not going well for us on the battlefield” – this is what one of the most famous Russian presenters, Vladimir Solovyov, recently admitted on his program on “Russia 1” TV. Military journalist Oleksandr Sladkov also reported on the difficulties in Ukraine in the early evening, stressing that the situation could have been foreseen: “We are still learning. I know it is terrible to hear it in the eighth month of the operation”, they wrote from “.Mother well“.

The turnaround in Russian state media’s approach is most likely due to direct instructions from the Kremlin, Bloomberg news agency suggests, citing its sources familiar with how the Kremlin handles media editorial policy. . For the first time, military defeats and withdrawals are reported. Viewers in the country can now get a more realistic picture of what is happening on the battlefield, but behind all this there is a strategy, notes the German “Handelsblatt”. “The failures are so significant that they can no longer be silenced even in Russia,” commented the Tagesspiegel argument. And probably behind it all is Putin’s concern that “his relentlessly optimistic propaganda is fueling ever greater doubts in the public.”

The criticisms are legitimate, but not against Putin

The change in Moscow’s official information policy has led to an increase in “unusually public criticism of the military,” Bloomberg writes. The allowed controlled “glasnost” is so widespread that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov also recently attacked the Russian Defense Ministry directly. At the same time, criticism of Putin and his decision on the invasion, which began on February 24, is not allowed.

“We have to stop lying,” former general Andrey Kartapolov said on a popular Russian talk show. Currently, Kartapolov heads the defense committee in the lower house of the Duma. “Our people are not stupid,” he pointed out.

“The war cannot be won”

Bloomberg also says that President Putin has held at least two meetings with a small group of Russian military correspondents since the beginning of the summer. One of these occurred shortly before the decision on partial mobilization. Some of the correspondents wondered if Putin was getting complete information on what was happening on the battlefield, the media said.

“Yesterday we lost 16 settlements in the Kherson region. What will we lose today?”. With this question, Olga Skabeeva turned to a Russian military officer in her October 5th broadcast. Her response was that what happened was a maneuver with elements of withdrawal.

“There is now a general understanding that the war cannot be won,” a Russian state television reporter who wished to remain anonymous told the British Guardian. According to him, the country’s political elite is gripped by “great fear”.

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