"Kirill Stremousov, said Mr. Shoigu should consider killing himself because of the Russian army’s failures in Ukraine."
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Putin’s Military Faces Rising Criticism From the Pro-War Camp
Critics say Russia’s military was unprepared for war.
Discontent among supporters of Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine has produced an extraordinary barrage of criticism directed at the leadership of the Russian military, creating a new challenge to President Vladimir V. Putin, who, after cracking down on Russia’s liberal opposition, now faces growing dissent in his own camp.
The latest salvo came on Thursday when a Russian-installed occupation official in Ukraine upbraided the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, a close associate of Mr. Putin. The official, Kirill Stremousov, said Mr. Shoigu should consider killing himself because of the Russian army’s failures in Ukraine.
“Many people are saying that as an officer, the defense minister could simply shoot himself for being the one who let things get to this state,” said Mr. Stremousov, the deputy governor of the Kherson region of southern Ukraine.
Last month, it was largely pro-Russian bloggers who were voicing anger over the failings of military planning that led to the Russian army’s being routed in northeastern Ukraine. But after Russian forces were forced to retreat in two other sections of the front line in the last week, prominent officials have increasingly joined the chorus.
Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the defense committee in Russia’s lower house of Parliament, excoriated the Defense Ministry for covering up the bad news from the front. Another lawmaker said that members of Parliament had written to Russia’s prosecutor general asking for an investigation of the military’s supply problems.
“They need to stop lying,” Mr. Kartapolov said on Wednesday. “Our people aren’t stupid, far from it, and they see that they are not being taken seriously. It’s not being considered necessary to tell them even part of the truth, let alone all of it.”
Mr. Shoigu, who has vacationed with Mr. Putin in Siberia, has yet to respond to the criticism, and Mr. Putin has not commented on it. There were indications that the criticism was part of infighting in the Russian ruling elite that was spilling into the open. It comes on the heels of a tirade against the military leadership that Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman ruler of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, published over the weekend.
Mr. Kadyrov’s tirade appeared to open the floodgates, especially after the Kremlin did nothing public to punish him for his breach of wartime discipline.
While none of the prominent pro-war critics of the military have attacked Mr. Putin personally, the Kremlin could still lose control of the situation if Russian battlefield losses continue, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst.
“We’re seeing for the first time a personified attack of one against the other within the regime,” said Ms. Stanovaya, the founder of R. Politik, a political analysis firm. “This is a rather dangerous situation for Putin because no one is in control of it.”
One common thread in the criticism has been that Russia’s military, despite the country’s enormous defense budget, has turned out to be unprepared for a real war. Many Russian hawks have been calling on the military for months to escalate its offensive. And while they celebrated Mr. Putin’s draft as a way of turning the tide in the war, they have criticized the military for its poor execution of it.
“So what’s the genius idea of the General Staff?” Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent state television host, said on his online talk show on Thursday. “Just explain it to me, dear people who have received all the necessary budget resources for so many years.”
Some of the most blunt criticism was laid out in a widely shared Telegram post by Oleg Tsaryov, a former separatist official in eastern Ukraine, who said that while Russian military leaders need not commit suicide, they should resign, “like European officials do in cases of public failures.”
Mr. Putin would not have invaded Ukraine, he wrote, “if the Defense Ministry had not guaranteed that the goals and tasks of the special operation could be accomplished in the time frame that was set.”
“With their actions or their inaction, the ministry’s leadership has ended up putting Russia’s existence under threat, and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war,” he wrote.
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