Caught on tape, the two Russian senior colonels did not hide their fury as Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine ground into its fourth inconclusive month. But the target of their anger was not the Ukrainians shooting at them but their own military and political superiors, whom they said — profanely and repeatedly — were not trying to win the war they started.
While much of the Western world and a small but vocal domestic opposition have condemned the brutality of the Russian campaign, the colonels, in a tape released by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, say President Vladimir Putin and his generals have not been tough enough.
Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital targeted unsuccessfully early in the fighting, got off far too easy, they said.
“Even if [artillery guns] hit the wrong [expletive] place, let them be [expletive] scared, shoot the [expletive] train stations, shoot the [expletive] railways, for [expletive]’s sake,” one Russian colonel said.
“An [expletive] rocket should have flown into [Ukraine’s Parliament],” the colonel added, as the two officers explicitly and bluntly criticized Mr. Putin, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and commanders on the ground in Ukraine.
The recording offers a window into an under-appreciated dynamic in the war, which has killed tens of thousands, sent millions of Ukrainian cities fleeing to the country, and has now settled into a grinding war of attrition in the country’s south and east.
While Mr. Putin faces mounting diplomatic, economic and military pressure to stop the war, he’s also facing pressure from key voices inside the war to escalate and double down on the battle with both Ukraine and NATO.
And while the Kremlin has cracked down harshly on antiwar voices inside Russia, a surprisingly lively debate has broken out on social media among veterans groups and military experts about whether Mr. Putin is serious about winning.
The hawkish criticisms, according to Foreign Policy.com national security and intelligence analyst Amy Mackinnon, “are expressing growing agitation with the slow pace of the war, with some calling on [Mr. Putin] to institute national mobilization.”
“The rumblings from staunchly nationalist figures offer a glimpse at the corner into which Putin has painted himself into as he contends with a public hungry for a much-promised victory and a military too exhausted to deliver on,” Ms. Mackinnon wrote late last month.
Russian military bloggers, many now posting on the Russian-owned social media site Telegram, have been unsparing in recent days in their criticism of the Russian performance in the war so far, and deeply skeptical of the official Russian media accounts of how the campaign is going, according to Irina Borogan?and?Andrei Soldatov, Russian investigative journalists and nonresident senior fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis, in a recent blog post.
“In three months of the war, something completely unprecedented has emerged — a space for debate?within the Russian army, uncensored, and beyond the control of the?Ministry of Defense,” Ms. Borogan and Mr. Soldatov wrote. “That space is mostly manned by trusted, hardened veterans, many with the rank of major or lieutenant-colonel, no higher. Don’t be misled — these are not peaceniks in the making. If they criticize the army and the Kremlin, they do so from more radical positions.”
Many of their criticisms echo those of Western analysts and intelligence agencies that have been surprised by the relatively weak showing of Russian forces against an outmanned and outgunned opponent.
Russia’s scattershot blitzkrieg of Kyiv and other major cities early in the war was quickly repelled by Ukrainian defensive forces, the critics say. Supply lines were extended and vulnerable to enemy fire, Russian troops were poorly led and poorly motivated, and Moscow’s vaunted cyber and disinformation operations proved surprisingly weak.
Mr. Putin, his hawkish critics say, failed to use the May 9 Victory Day commemoration to rally the nation and reset the war. Owing apparently to fears of popular resistance, the Kremlin also has not called for a larger mobilization of troops to make up for the heavy losses suffered by the original invasion force.
Mr. Putin and his top aides continue to insist in public that the war is going according to plan, and point to small territorial gains in Ukraine’s Donbas region in recent weeks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that Russian forces were prepared to stay in Ukraine as long as necessary to protect its allies and interests in the eastern Donbas provinces.
Sunday’s Russian missile strike on targets just outside Kyiv could be a sign Mr. Putin and his generals have been hearing the criticism. Mr. Putin in an interview Sunday on Russian state television expressed his growing anger with the rush of Western aid into Ukraine that has helped Kyiv stave off Russian forces, hinting strongly Moscow now considered those aid flows legitimate targets in the war.
“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: To drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Mr. Putin told Rossiya state television Sunday.
If the U.S. and its allies supply Ukraine with longer-range missiles as promised, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we haven’t yet struck.”
And Mr. Putin can still count on lawmakers, state media commentators and others loyal to the regime who are voicing support for the war and amplifying the Kremlin’s grievances both against Ukraine and against NATO.
But in one sign that all was not well on the military front, Mr. Putin reportedly fired five generals and one police colonel last week in a clear sign of unhappiness with the performance of Russian forces so far.
According to the Russian newspaper Pravda, Mr. Putin fired Maj. Gens. Vasily Kukushkin, Alexander Laas, Andrew Lipilin, Alexander Udovenko and Yuri Instrankin. He also sacked police Col. Emil Musin. The newspaper cited a source close to Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs in confirming the report.
And the rise of a skeptical and informed dissent with Russia’s own military represents a dangerous new variable for Mr. Putin, according to a recent survey of the fighting by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
“The Kremlin is increasingly facing discontent not from Russians opposed to the war as a whole, but military and nationalist figures angry at Russian losses and frustrated with shifting Kremlin framing of the war,” the ISW wrote in its daily survey of the fighting May 30.
“Russian officials are increasingly unable to employ the same ideological justifications for the invasion in the face of clear setbacks, and a lack of concrete military gains within Ukraine will continue to foment domestic dissatisfaction with the war.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.