Russian nationalists on Sunday angrily demanded immediate changes from President Vladimir Putin to secure a final victory in the war in Ukraine, a day after the Russian military was forced to abandon its main stronghold in northeastern Ukraine.

The rapid fall of the town of Izyum in Kharkiv Oblast was Russia’s biggest military defeat since its forces were forced to halt their offensive on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in March. As Russian troops left town after town in Ukraine on Saturday, Vladimir Putin inaugurated Europe’s largest Ferris wheel in a Moscow park amid fireworks lighting up the sky over Red Square to celebrate the city’s founding in 1147. This was reported by the Reuters agency on Sunday, citing Rador. .

In an 11-minute voice message posted on the Telegram messaging app, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an ally of Vladimir Putin and whose troops have been on the front lines of the campaign in Ukraine, denied the loss of the city of Izyum, a key supply source. point. But he admitted that the “military special operation” is not going according to plan. “If today and tomorrow there are no changes in the conduct of the military special operation, I will be forced to go to the country’s leadership to explain the situation on the spot,” Kadyrov said.

The near-total silence from the authorities in Moscow about the defeat – or the lack of any explanation for what happened in northeastern Ukraine – has caused considerable anger among some pro-war commentators and Russian nationalists on social media. As the defeats continued, the Russian Ministry of Defense released a video on Friday of what it described as the introduction of troops into the Kharkiv region. On Sunday, the ministry said that Russian troops were hitting Ukrainian positions in the region with aviation, missiles and artillery.

Moscow is silent

Neither President Putin, who is the supreme commander of Russia’s armed forces, nor Defense Minister Sergei Soigu had publicly commented on the defeat until midday Sunday.

“We are proud of Moscow and love this city with its majestic antiquity and its modern and dynamic pace of life, with the charm of its parks, cozy alleys and streets, a large number of cultural and business events,” Putin told Muscovites. according to the Kremlin transcript of his greeting.

Vladimir Putin, who described his shock after being told as a KGB spy in East Germany that “Moscow was silent” when the Berlin Wall fell, said all those who fell during the operation in Ukraine gave their lives for Russia.

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.

“Now is not the time to be silent and say nothing… it hurts the cause a lot,” wrote a pro-war blogger known as Raibar on Twitter.

On Saturday, the Russian ministry announced a “regrouping” in which troops would be withdrawn from Kharkiv Oblast to focus on Donetsk Oblast further east in Ukraine – a statement that further angered many Russian military bloggers.

Some pro-Kremlin military correspondents and former and current soldiers who have amassed a large following on Telegram have accused the ministry of downplaying the defeat.

Igor Girkin, a militant nationalist and former FSB officer who helped fuel the 2014 war in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, compared the collapse of one of the main lines of the conflict to the 1905 Battle of Mukden – a catastrophic defeat in the Russian war – the Japanese who started the 1905 revolution in Russia.

Girkin, who has repeatedly criticized the country’s leadership, calling Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu a “cardboard marshal”, has repeatedly stated that Russia will be defeated in Ukraine if national mobilization is not declared.

Nationalist anger over the military failure is a potentially bigger problem for the Kremlin administration than pro-Western liberal criticism of Putin: opinion polls continue to show massive support for what Moscow calls a “special military operation.”

Amid Moscow Day celebrations with street parties and concerts on Saturday, the riots even spread to Russia’s normally subservient parliament. Serhiy Mironov, the leader of the so-called opposition but loyal to Vladimir Putin United Russia party, said on Twitter that fireworks in honor of the holiday should be canceled due to the military situation.

In a message published on Telegram by the well-known military correspondent Semyon Pegov, the celebration in Moscow was called “blasphemy” and the refusal of the Russian authorities to start a full-scale war – “schizophrenia.” “Russia will either become itself due to the birth of a new political elite… or it will cease to exist,” the message reads.

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