Leading Russian military bloggers quickly rallied behind the decision to do so withdraw Russian forces from the city of Kherson and other areas on the west bank of the Dnipro River.
A short time later he reports Reuters that General Sergei Surovikin, commander-in-chief of Russian forces in Ukraine, is under increasing pressure to achieve results on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The news agency reports, among other things, a televised session on RT last week, with the director of the state broadcaster Margarita Simonjan.
– We look forward to your brilliant achievements and pray for you. I pray for you every day, Simonjan said, before urging the general to ignore the “nonsense” of critics – a reference to influential military bloggers who have expressed disappointment with the withdrawal.
Experts: – It can have serious consequences
critical voices
One such military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, took issue with the Ukrainian president’s recent visit to Kherson, wondering why the Kremlin didn’t kill him.
– Symbolically, it would have been great if it was a Geran [dronetype] it had landed on his stupid head, but it didn’t. How come? Either we fight a war wholeheartedly, otherwise nothing will work out, Tatarsky says in a video post to his roughly 500,000 followers, according to Reuters.
Right-wing nationalist academic Alexandr Dugin went further, blaming the defeat directly on Vladimir Putin.
He accused the Russian president of not fully embracing Russian nationalist ideology.
– The limit has been reached, wrote in one chronicle in Russian Tsargrad.
He introduced Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russia’s most famous ultra-nationalist presenters live tv calls on Moscow to start a full-scale war in Europe.
He lamented the “serious problems that have arisen”, which he believes must be overcome with an “iron fist”. Among other things, he says, this involves “kicking out the incompetent” and “shooting the sticklers.”
Many have ties to the Kremlin
Despite harsh media censorship, the Kremlin has allowed the ever-growing community of military blogs to speak critically of the regime and the war in Ukraine.
Institute for the Study of War I believe Vladimir Putin has blocked the Russian Defense Ministry’s attempts to restrict or control many of the top bloggers.
The think tank points out that many of them have ties to the regime and that the president has assigned some formal roles in the Kremlin, in order to fill the nationalist constituencies they are targeting.
Jakub M. Godzimirski, a Russian foreign and security policy researcher at NUPI, has already spoken The newspaper that what at first appears to be a challenge to the regime is actually being used to support more brutal behavior in Ukraine.
– Does not survive the loss of Crimea
– More order in the ranks under Surovikin
The Russian withdrawal from Kherson was quicker and more orderly than many Western military analysts had imagined.
It has taken place in “relatively orderly forms” compared to previous major retreats, he concludes British Ministry of Defence.
– The relative success is probably partly due to a more efficient and unified operational command under General Sergei Surovikin, writes the ministry.
This was stated recently by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov Reuters which perceives the Russian military as more disciplined, following Surovikin’s appointment in early October.
Alexander Baunov, a senior member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank and a former Russian diplomat, believes that the general, after withdrawing from Kherson, has fulfilled half of his mandate and will now have to fulfill the other half.
– For some it means a new offensive which will demonstrate that all the retreats were in fact a tactical manoeuvre. For others, it means finding a way to force Ukraine into peace talks using the following formula; The city of Kherson in exchange for peace, electricity, water and heating in Ukrainian cities, Baunov told Reuters.
