Vladimir Putin spoke with military bloggers on Tuesday and seemed to be clearly enjoying the moment, CNN reports.

Russia’s leading pro-war war bloggers and state-run military correspondents are a docile audience, and judging by his body language, Vladimir Putin is clearly relishing the moment, feeding them his version of what’s happening on the ground as Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues.

There are, of course, different filters at work – what his commanders tell him, what he wants the public to believe, what he wants the West to hear, and what is actually true (what he knows or doesn’t know), CNN journalists report.

But he addressed questions that may interest Russians, and some of the answers may not be very comforting.

Ukrainian counteroffensive

The Russian president also spoke on Tuesday about Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which he said began on June 4, during which Kyiv suffered “10 times more” casualties than Russia.

Putin stated that Ukraine’s losses would be 10 times greater than Russia’s, and that Kyiv would lose more than 160 tanks, while Moscow would lose 54. He also said that Ukraine would lose 25-30% of the equipment provided to it by the West, and that Ukrainian the army would not be able to make any progress in the war zones.

Talks about orientation to Kyiv

For example, he did not rule out a possible additional mobilization, unlike his press secretary, who does so often.

It will depend on what Russia wants to achieve in the future, Putin said, reflecting that he might try to retake Kyiv.

“Some public figures say that we need to get a million or two million (mobilized Russian soldiers, no),” Putin said. “It depends on what we want,” he added.

He was asked in the context of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, which Russian forces failed to capture after a full-scale invasion of the neighboring country on February 24, 2022.

“Should we go back there?” Putin answered this question.

The only unpleasant question for Putin

Of course, all of this was carefully tuned with questions that the Kremlin would ask in advance.

The only time he seemed a little stunned was when he was asked about Belgorod and why the cross-border raids continued.

He didn’t have a very good answer, other than that the borders need to be strengthened (there’s already a lot of money spent on those borders) and that Russia might have to consider building a “sanitary line” in Ukraine, whatever. this means.

These raids are a disgrace, and the president has yet to explain why he can’t stop them.

Another salvo in the information war

The rest used proven rhetorical lines – the key to solving this conflict lies in the West, he said; if they stop supplying weapons, he will be happy to say – and that the strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure were the result of Ukraine crossing Russia’s “red lines”.

He did not take into account the minor issue of Russian troops crossing the sovereign borders of Ukraine on February 24 last year.

This, of course, according to Vladimir Putin, was a matter of self-defense.

Today, we witnessed another volley of information war, directed mainly against our own people.

It was an attempt to try to reassure them that their president “can still do it,” CNN reporters say. (photo: Dreamstime)

Read in full: Vladimir Putin, the first reaction to Ukraine’s counteroffensive and losses at the front / Critics of his own army

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