![]() ![]() One hard-line military blogger, former FSB officer Igor Girkin, who runs a Telegram channel that has repeatedly called for harsher military action against Ukraine, criticized the chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, and predicted that Shoigu would be dismissed. “And what have you been doing in this time?” “What is the genius idea of the General Staff?” he continued, adding that time was against Russia in the war. “Destroy, with firepower! Or it turns out that it doesn’t exist, like uniforms for mobilized soldiers.” Act!” Solovyov said, demanding that Russia take the enemy down. Now it’s time to tell the truth,” he declared Thursday on his YouTube channel, adding to the growing allegations on state television that the Russian military has misled the public about its failures in the Ukraine war while exaggerating its achievements. “Lies, at all levels, should be punished. Solovyov said the reports of conditions for the mobilized soldiers shown in the videos “make one’s hair stand on end.” Hard-line nationalist state television anchor Vladimir Solovyov launched a new attack on the military Thursday morning, without naming Shoigu. The video spread widely on social media after it was posted by a pro-Kremlin military blogger, Rybar, who has more than 900,000 subscribers. But other reports suggested that the videos could be a staged effort by Shoigu’s rivals to discredit the defense minister. Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti reported Thursday that the unit of 299 soldiers would be sent for training in Mulino, Russia, quoting an official in the Western Military District, comments that appeared to confirm that the men in the videos were indeed mobilized soldiers. Another waved a thermometer at the camera, shouting that many of the recruits were sick with fevers. ![]() One soldier in the group had posted a video saying that his unit was told they would soon be sent to fight in Ukraine without training. The rowdy public attacks have shattered the prohibition on criticizing the Russian military leadership seen earlier in the war, and underscore the rivalry and poor coordination between Russia’s disparate forces on the battlefield, where the operations of Prigozhin’s mercenary force have at times appeared to be at odds with the strategy and objectives of the traditional Russian military, according to analysts.Ī series of videos circulating on pro-Kremlin telegram channels Thursday showed a group of several hundred Russian soldiers whose leaders complained that after being mobilized recently, they were kept in “cattle conditions,” forced to buy their own food and issued weapons that were decades old. Until the war, Shoigu was often tipped as a potential Putin successor. Shoigu, 67, has served as defense minister for nearly a decade, but has been part of Putin’s leadership team since Putin was elevated to the presidency on Dec. The criticism also signals the mounting domestic political problem the military setbacks, and a botched plan to mobilize thousands of new troops, now pose for Putin. The calls for Shoigu’s dismissal telegraph his increasing vulnerability after a series of humiliating military failures in recent weeks, including Russia’s loss over the weekend of Lyman, a strategic transit hub in Donetsk, and its surrender last month of nearly all the territory in the northeast Kharkiv region that Russian forces had occupied for many months. The growing, strident criticism of the Russian military command is driven by Russian hard-line nationalists, some of whom have long borne a grudge against Shoigu, including Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, each of whom have their own loyal military forces fighting on the ground in Ukraine. But in the days since Putin declared the seizure of the Ukrainian territories, in flagrant violation of international law, Russian troops have been retreating on two fronts – in Donetsk and Luhansk to the east, and in Mykolaiv and Kherson to the south. The city is not occupied by Russia, and the Kremlin has vowed to conquer parts of the allegedly annexed regions that it does not control. The rockets struck residential apartment blocks, city authorities said. In Ukraine, the Russian military launched multiple rocket attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia, the capital of one of four regions now illegally claimed by Russia. ![]() RIGA, Latvia – Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu faced intensifying political pressure Thursday over a series of disorderly military retreats, as Russian state television anchors openly attacked the military command for Ukraine’s success in regaining territory in areas President Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed. ![]()
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