kravietz 🦇 on Nostr: Yesterday, #Putin delivered yet another surreal “report from the front”, which ...

Yesterday, #Putin delivered yet another surreal “report from the front”, which sparked a fair bit of gallows humour amongst Z-patriots:



“We’re 10 km from Sumy” – in reality, it’s 18 km, the same distance as, for example, in January this year.


“ZSU units surrounded near Stary Oskol” – that would be very good news, as the only locality of that name lies between Kursk and Voronezh, i.e. deep within #Russia; what Putin meant by this is unclear (just like with “Komsomolsk” a few months ago)


“We are 8 km from Sloviansk” – this is the distance between the furthest point where a Russian single-use reconnaissance group was detected and the outermost administrative part of Sloviansk; in reality, there are more than 20 km between the city and the area under actual Russian control


“96 per cent of Konstantinovka is under our control” – this is categorically contradicted by footage published by the Russians themselves, showing drone attacks on ZSU units in the city centre, thereby confirming their presence there

Furthermore, Putin went on to say that “no agreements were reached in Anchorage” (with Trump), contradicting Lavrov’s calls over the past six months for a “return to the Anchorage agreements”, and that the “aim of the SWO” is now – by contrast – “the liberation of the Donbas and Novorossiya”.

Just a few months ago, Lavrov himself had been suggesting that Russia was prepared to agree to a ceasefire in exchange for the handover of the Donbas alone (it does not exercise 100 per cent control over either the ‘DNR’ or even the ‘LNR’). The inclusion of “Novorossiya” on the list also means nothing formally, but it suggests the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions in addition to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

In other words, Putin is doing exactly what he did in 2022: he is putting himself in a position where the objectives he has declared are completely unrealistic, whilst at the same time expecting both the Russians and the West to play along with a game called ‘Putin must save face in the war’. But today, Putin has far fewer cards to play than he did then – not to mention the fact that he is clearly much more out of touch with reality, not only regarding the situation on the front line but also within Russia itself.