The Ukrainian army takes the initiative on the battlefield and the Russian-occupied areas are under heavy fire. Tens of thousands of Russian troops are in danger of being deprived of supplies. The Russian military bloggers are going crazy; they now openly call Putin ‘little dick’.
The Ukrainian drones are gaining increasingly greater range, allowing them to strike deep into the hinterland of the Russian army. As a result, they have brought the supply lines of the Russian armed forces in Zaporizhia, Kherson and the Donbas to the brink of paralysis, complain the often well-informed Z-bloggers, a collective name for supporters of the war in Ukraine.
The cheap unmanned drones, which can fly up to 150 kilometers deep, have turned the land corridor connecting Russia through southern Ukraine to Crimea into a “road to hell.”
Freight traffic has been limited on the ‘Novorossia’ highway since last week, writes Telegram channel PriZrak Novorossii. Videos are circulating all over the internet of dozens of burnt-out car wrecks, hit by so-called Hornets, drones that you cannot hear and that seem to fall from the sky out of nowhere.
Situation increasingly threatening
In Kherson and Zaporizhia the situation is becoming increasingly threatening, as logistics are already ‘partially at a standstill,’ writes Z channel Rybar. “The Ukrainian armed forces have significantly increased the number of drone attacks on vehicles, leading to a threat of shortages of certain goods in Crimea and restrictions on fuel sales.”
The latter is evident from video images and other online messages: on the peninsula annexed by Russia, some gas stations only dispense 20 liters of gasoline per day and others none at all.
480 kilometer long front line
The logistics of the 480 kilometer long front line and two Russian battle groups are currently under threat, military analyst Jan Matveyev, affiliated with the anti-corruption fund FBK of the murdered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, also says on his YouTube channel.
“At least 150,000 soldiers are in danger of running out of supplies,” suspects Matveyev, who says that the current drone attacks in Donetsk, Mariupol and Crimea could cause a “critical collapse” of the Russian army in Ukraine.
‘Putin detached from reality’
The Z bloggers are driven to despair, accuse President Vladimir Putin of being ‘disconnected from reality’ and openly call him pypa‘little dick’ in Russian slang.
“We don’t give a shit what Putin says,” writes one of the bloggers. There are now hundreds, if not thousands, who provide these types of comments. No liberals, no supporters of Navalny, but bloggers who call themselves ‘patriots’ and want nothing more than for Russia to win the war.
The situation is turning from complicated and critical to catastrophic
Putin himself, however, does not want to budge. Last week, at a meeting with Ukraine veterans, he shouted three cheers and grimly claimed that “the situation of the Ukrainian forces at the front is turning from complicated and critical to catastrophic.”
Even in the Duma, the Russian House of Representatives and normally an applause machine for Putin, criticism is growing. Last week, Representative Valeri Gartoeng shouted in despair: “How can we pay for the war with zero economic growth?!” Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov put it even more starkly: “The economy is on the verge of collapse!”
Escalate commitment
“And if that escalation does not work, Putin has two options left to achieve victory: attacks on Europe, either hybrid, with sabotage actions and cyber attacks, or with nuclear weapons,” independent political scientist Nikolai Petrov warns menacingly from London.
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