“I congratulate school workers from all 89 regions of Russia,” Putin said in his video message, highlighting his new tally of Russian federal subjects – increased by four with the addition of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine. that he’s trying to grab.
Putin’s surreal message to war-torn areas amid cascading Russian military setbacks on the battlefield has created a split screen between the image of control the Kremlin is trying to project and the reality on the front lines, where Russia has been losing ground for weeks. Earlier on Wednesday, the president had signed legislation to absorb regions seized by Russia despite its lack of control.
As he spoke, the Russian leader gave no indication that his grip on the regions had slipped yet. “Let me emphasize: Russia has been and will be sovereign,” he said, adding: “Above all, it is necessary to convey the moral cultural code of the Russian people to children and to exclude attempts to ‘impose foreign and perverted interpretations of history.
Highlighting the contradiction between Putin’s assertion that Russia will remain “forever” in the four annexed Ukrainian regions and the situation on the ground, the president’s spokesman conceded on Wednesday that “certain areas” in the Kherson regions and Zaporizhzhia were under Kyiv control and had yet to be recaptured.
“Control will nevertheless be regained over certain territories there, and we will continue to consult with the part of the population expressing the desire to live with Russia,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with journalists.
The veneer of a successful annexation that Putin hoped to create is fading in Russia amid continued criticism of his botched military mobilization – aimed at calling up 300,000 new troops – and grim reports of further battlefield casualties by warmongering military correspondents with massive online audiences.
“My friends, I know you expect me to comment on the situation, but I really don’t know what to tell you,” pro-Russian military journalist Roman Saponkov wrote on Telegram about the losses along the Dnieper. “The retreat of the northern right bank in the Kherson region is a disaster.”
“Vysokopillya, Lyubimovka, Velyka Oleksandrivka, Davydov Grid, these places were flooded with the blood of our soldiers,” Saponkov added, listing key towns in Kherson that the Ukrainian army captured in just 48 hours.
Just a month after Russian forces were forced out of the northeast Kharkiv region in a lightning offensive, Ukrainian troops have made gains in Donetsk and are entering Luhansk, the region where Russia has the strongest control.
As Moscow acknowledged that its defenses in the south had been breached, the Russian public watched tense exchanges on television, as leading propagandists scrambled to explain why the military was suffering setback after setback.
“We lost 17 settlements in the Kherson region,” Alexander Sladkov, a war reporter with the state channel Russia 1, told one of the leading talk shows, “60 Minutes.”
“It’s worrying, to say the least. Why was there no cover there? the host, Olga Skabeeva, replied.
“We are waiting for reinforcements. It’s coming, but if we throw them into battle now, forgive me, what will happen to them? Sladkov asked rhetorically. “If we had mobilized 300,000 people at the beginning of the war, when we had heavy losses, we would have spent them too. Now it’s different; we now understand that a soldier must be prepared.
“When will there be positive changes for Russia? Skabeeva wondered.
“If we are talking about big, important offensives, I would say two months,” Sladkov replied.
Putin is betting that the tens of thousands of newly mobilized men can bolster his exhausted ranks in Ukraine and allow furloughs for exhausted soldiers, some of whom have not been replaced since the invasion began in late February.
“In many areas of the front line, fatigue has set in after a long offensive period, during which vast territories were liberated,” Alexander Kots, military correspondent for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, wrote on Tuesday. telegram blog. “But there is no more strength to hold them back.”
Western military experts say the Russian leader may be running out of time to reverse his ailing war effort and faces a stark choice: spend more time training reinforcements and risk further Ukrainian advances, or throw the men into battle quickly and hope they can hold their own despite a lack of combat experience.
Roman Starovoit, the governor of the Kursk region in western Russia, which is one of the main staging points for the invasion, described as “horrible” the state of some military units he recently visited.
“I can’t understand how an active MoD training unit can be in such a state,” Starovoit said. “A ruined canteen, broken and rusty showers, a lack of beds, and the existing ones are broken.
“There is a lack of uniforms, the parade ground looks like it was bombed,” the governor added. “It’s good that at least there is equipment and weapons.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said newly mobilized soldiers will receive “up to a month of training”. But there have been multiple reports of military commissariats deploying soldiers to the front lines just days after they were summoned.
Mobilization problems announced two weeks ago snowballed so quickly that more than 20 Russian regional governors resorted to a rare public admission that mistakes had been made, while firing several enlistment officers.
There are numerous reports of men unfit for service who have been called into service, including the blind, deaf, disabled, or elderly.
In a speech Wednesday, Putin faulted the Defense Ministry for not cementing exemptions for students, professionals in key industries and others.
“Initially, the Ministry of Defense reported that several categories of our citizens did not need to be called up for mobilization, but they still did not make the relevant changes to the regulations,” said said Putin. “We now need to make the appropriate corrections.”
At least nine mobilized soldiers have died before they even arrive on the battlefield, some of heart disease, raising further questions about whether enlistment officers are meeting health criteria for recruits. Others lost their lives in murky circumstances, including a young man who died at a training site in Krasnoyarsk on Sunday after a clash between him and other men, according to local media.
Three deaths were reported at a garrison in the Sverdlovsk region: one man died of a heart attack, another by suicide, while a third succumbed to liver failure linked to excessive alcohol consumption after having been sent home, an official told local news outlet EA. New.
The deaths reveal deeper problems in mobilization efforts, linked to low morale and appalling conditions at some training centers, where mobilized men sometimes have to sleep on the floor and where the Ministry of Defense apparently lacks supplies basics such as socks, adequate food and uniforms.
“Our guys need thermal underwear, warm socks, gloves, cigarettes, sugar and canned meat,” a message read in one of the groups on Vkontakte, a social media site, hosted by mothers and wives of Russian soldiers trying to crowdsource equipment.
One of the women in the chat room, Anna, wrote that her husband had been called recently and needed combat boots.
Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia; and Robyn Dixon contributed to this report.
