Not going well...

Moscow's campaign is in "operational crisis" as it suffers losses in Ukraine, Russian correspondents say 

Mick Kreve

Correspondents for Russian media are defending their dispatches on the performance of Russia’s military in Ukraine as they report on Moscow’s losses in the war.

“I’ve been told that I make people depressed with my news,” Alexander Kots from the pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote on Telegram. “Allegedly people need something positive. There won’t be any good news any time soon, the timing is wrong. Not from the Kherson frontline, not from the Luhansk one as it happens.” 

Ukraine “is introducing well-prepared reserves, realizing its advantage in both personnel and intelligence data,” he said Tuesday, adding that Russia’s so-called “special military operation,” meanwhile, is undergoing an “operational crisis.”

Kots, who was embedded with Russian troops in the Donetsk city of Lyman, wrote in the tabloid earlier this week that Russian forces suffered from lack of manpower, bad communications, and “mistakes” by commanding officers. Ukraine recaptured Lyman over the weekend.  

“A certain tiredness crept in in many areas after a long attacking season during which we liberated large swathes of land. We didn’t have enough strength left after that to hold on to them,” he said. “Why so? Because we simply don’t have enough people. Although it might have looked different at some point. We needed this sucker punch to understand how things stand in real terms. That’s why they announced the partial mobilization.” 

Kots reassured his followers that he saw neither “panic nor arrogance” among the Russian forces. Besides Kots, Russia 24’s Evgeniy Poddubnyy is also writing similar reports.

Poddubnyy said Tuesday that “we’re going through the hardest time on the frontline” and that “for the time being it will become even harder.”