​Since the beginning of the war, commentators on Russian state television have been clamoring to express their support for Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation,” including threatening messages from the West, but the lightning counteroffensive of Ukrainian forces has forced a change of discourse in the state media, promoting, among other things, peace talks with Ukraine.

After the blitzkrieg counteroffensive in Kyiv, the mood on Russian television was subdued, with the narrative turning to how Ukrainian forces had largely outnumbered the Russians in the northeast, Reuters reported.

Vitaly Ganchev, a Russian-appointed official of the Kharkiv region, told the state TV channel “Russia-24” that Russian troops were outnumbered “eight times.” He also stated, without providing evidence, that Ukrainian forces were reinforced by “Western mercenaries.”

Ganchev said that the “situation is getting more difficult every hour”, saying that the border with Russia’s Belgorod region is closed.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian troops captured the main Russian supply centers in Izyum and Kupyansk, where the Russian-appointed administration of the Kharkiv region was based.

“The most difficult week at the front,” said host Dmytro Kiselyov at the opening of his show on Sunday evening.

Kiselyov said that Russian troops left “previously liberated settlements” under pressure from “overwhelming enemy forces”.

Former Russian MP says on TV that Russia cannot defeat Ukraine and calls for peace talks

In a rare display of dissent, Boris Nadezhdin, a former liberal politician and regular talk show host, told Gazprom-owned NTV that advisers had misled Putin into believing Ukraine would quickly surrender and called for peace talks to end the conflict quickly, Newsweek reported. .

• “The people who convinced President Putin that the special operation will be quick and effective, we will not hit the civilian population, we will also bring in our National Guard, together with the Kadyrvi, we will restore order. All these people set a trap for us,” said former deputy of the Russian Federation Boris Nadezhdin.
• “Someone told President Putin that the Ukrainians will surrender, that they will be free, that they will want to unite with Russia. Someone told him that. They said the same thing on TV. We are now on the verge of understanding: it is absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine with those resources and colonial methods,… contract workers, mercenaries and without mobilization.
• The Russian army is opposed by a strong army, fully supported by the most economically and technologically powerful states, including European ones,” he added.

The TV presenter asked him if Nadezhdin was suggesting that Russia fully mobilize against Ukraine, but he replied that he was suggesting the opposite.

• “I propose peace talks to stop the war and move on to solving political issues.”

Nadezhdin’s outspoken criticism surprised Western commentators, and Guardian journalist Sean Walker noted that in Russian broadcasts “there was always a ‘guest from NATO’ who said relatively sensitive things and then could be filmed by others.”

“But Boris Nadezhdin told some dangerous truths here, I wonder if he will be arrested soon,” he wrote on Twitter.

The last redoubt of Russian propaganda

On 60 Minutes, host Olga Skabeyeva opened Monday’s morning show by calling Sunday’s Russian bombing of Ukrainian power plants and the resulting blackouts in eastern Ukraine a “turning point in a special military operation.”

Several guests also recalled Putin’s remarks in July that Russia “hasn’t started anything serious yet,” saying Moscow would now step up military action.

Some newspapers presented Russia’s withdrawal from some territories as talks by the Ministry of Defense about a “tactical redeployment” of its troops, although some publications quoted military experts who suggested that not everything went according to plan.

The Izvestia newspaper stated in its conclusion over the weekend that Russia had killed 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and the army had “redeployed its forces to focus on Donbas.”

Nezavisimaya Gazeta was more critical, saying that the Russian Defense Ministry had not commented on “extremely disturbing reports from Ukraine… for several days.”

The newspaper noted that while Ukrainian troops were advancing toward Russia’s western border, Moscow’s military leadership was thousands of kilometers away in the country’s far east for annual military exercises involving 50,000 troops.

Solovyov calls for the shooting of Russian commanders who allowed Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The main propagandist of the Kremlin, Volodymyr Solovyov, called for the shooting of Russian commanders who allowed the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces in the Kharkiv region, Inforesist reports.

This is after Solovyov last week expressed concern about the development of hostilities in Ukraine, in which he can be seen with bruises on his face.

“However, I am worried. Of course, we would like ours to just move forward, but that doesn’t happen in life,” says Solovyov, adding that “there are many different things in science.”

With peace talks between Ukraine and Russia deadlocked, Russia Today host Margarita Simonyan and State Duma Defense Committee chairman Andriy Kartapolov appeared on Russian television to deny any possibility of resuming peace talks for the past nearly two months.

Also recently, Russian propagandists called for attacking the decision-making centers in Kyiv after the explosion of the car of Daria Dugina, daughter of Oleksandr Dugin, the ideologue of Russian President Vladimir Putin, near Moscow.