Gone is the victorious tone, which promised citizens a blitzkrieg and a complete conquest of Ukraine. From now on, on Russian television, the tone of Kremlin-acquired propagandists is more restrained. On state television Rossiya 1, the highly popular and widely watched presenter Vladimir Solovyov was surprisingly measured when speaking about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on Sunday night.
“I would have preferred that we attack Kyiv tomorrow and take it. But I know there are 300,000 men mobilized. It takes time to train them, to coordinate the fight. It also takes time for them to have everything they need to get in.” battle,” he said, his face serious.
Before pressing: “we do not expect good news. We need strong will and strategic patience. We are fighting Satanism, in its purest form.”
The fault of the West
The new argument presented by Moscow is now clear. Yes, the advance of the Russian army is not happening as fast as expected. But this is explained because the enemy has changed in size. From now on, the Kremlin will no longer fight against kyiv, but against the West and NATO.
“The propagandists explain that the situation is more difficult because we are no longer fighting the ‘ukro-Nazis’, we are fighting the West,” said Anna Colin Lebedev, a lecturer specializing in post-Soviet societies, on the set of BFMTV.
On the ground, the situation is certainly complex for Moscow. The four Ukrainian territories officially annexed on Friday by Vladimir Putin are only partly controlled by the Russians. Worse still, the Ukrainian army is retaking ground there every day. Moscow announced this weekend that it had withdrawn from Lyman, in the east of the country, after the Ukrainians managed to encircle Russian forces there.
Colonel Michel Goya, a defense consultant for BFMTV, even believes that “the Ukrainian army is now stronger, more voluminous.” “The Ukrainians now have the initiative in operations,” he said on our set.
The failures of the mobilization
Another notable change observed among Russian propagandists: the recognition of the failures of the partial mobilization announced by Vladimir Putin. The master of the Kremlin himself admitted that the flaws had to be corrected, after the 50-year-olds were called.
As BBC journalist Francis Scarr observed, presenter Vladimir Solovyov also acknowledged mistakes and asked the offending recruiting officers to “fire a bullet”.
Source: BFM TV
