Disappointment over battlefield failures, long expressed on blogs and social media sites run by Russian nationalist pundits and pro-Kremlin analysts, has now spilled over into state media, an AP analysis shows.

The less conciliatory tone of state media has emerged as President Vladimir Putin faces growing Russian discontent over the partial mobilization of reservists and as government officials struggle to explain plans to annex Ukrainian regions at the same time they were retaken by Kyiv’s forces.

On Sunday, after Ukraine recaptured Liman, an eastern city used by Russian forces as a key logistics and transportation hub, Putin’s allies dropped subtleties and more directly criticized his military, saying they needed tougher measures to win. .

“What happened on Saturday, Liman, is a serious challenge for us,” Volodymyr Solovyov, a prime-time talk show host on the state-run Rossiya 1 channel and one of the country’s biggest supporters, said live from the Kremlin on Sunday. . “We need to unite, make unpopular but necessary decisions and act,” he said.

An article about Liman’s resignation in the popular Russian pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda painted a terrible picture of the Russian army. The article, published on Sunday, said Russian forces in Liman were suffering from a lack of supplies and manpower, poor coordination and tactical errors orchestrated by the military.

“It’s the way it’s always been,” the report quoted an anonymous soldier who was part of a group retreating to Kreminnaya, another strategically important town in the Ukrainian army’s crosshairs, as saying. “There is virtually no communication between the various units.”

Posting on the Telegram social network, Russian military correspondents working for state media were also upset by reports of the withdrawal, with some expressing concern over Ukraine’s continued advance toward Kreminnaya.

Ukrainian troops retook the Liman a day after Moscow celebrated the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, including Donetsk, about 40 percent of which – now including the Liman – are under Kyiv’s control.

“Russia’s defeat in Kharkiv (region) and Liman combined with the Kremlin’s failure to effectively and correctly conduct a partial mobilization fundamentally changes the Russian information space,” says a report by the Washington Institute for the Study of War.