Something Is Breaking Inside Russia

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]So, something is happening in Russia. I mean, in just the last 24 hours, we are seeing even some of the most pro-Russian Russians sounding awfully depressed, like more depressed than normal, which is saying something. I mean, they're saying things like Russia will not be able to accomplish their original war aims. What I feel like that's pretty significant. Another argues that the fake reports are about to cost them even more territory in the East. And even one vented frustrations about just continuing to quote, "throw meat at the enemy." In fact, that's where we're going to start. But something I want you to keep in mind as we move through these four different examples, all that were just stated by major Russian channels in the last 24 hours is it's very hard to look at this and read this four different issues and and think that things are going according to plan.

[00:00:45]Again, I'm not about to say that the Russian military or the Russian nation is on the verge of collapse. But when you hear the issues that they are dealing with and just highlighting today, for instance, it's hard to look at that and think that things are moving in the right direction for Putin and his military. Starting out, we have a quote here from Igor Girkin. And I should mention that every one of these will be linked in the description below. Girkin, interesting character to say the least.

[00:01:08]Russian nationalist kind of led the initial invasion into Ukraine back in 2014 and shot down was responsible for shooting down a civilian airliner. He says, quote, "The situation is steadily deteriorating. We continue to throw meat at the enemy stubbornly charging headlong into his positions on purely deadend directions where from a strategic point of view, we need to attack along the Denipo deapia, but the enemy is now attacking there. It's unlikely that his offensive will lead to serious successes and breakthroughs of our front. But our offensive successes, very modest, over the past year, have already almost been completely eliminated. I'm going to turn to a map to show you the area he's talking about here because we are getting more and more reports every single day about Ukrainian offensive activity in the west zaparisia direction. Uh this is the area here in the middle of the map. We'll zoom in a little bit. Specifically, Steenork and Primorsk. These are two areas. It's not major, right? This is kind of the nature and what Girkin is getting at is they continue to and I should note that anytime somebody uses the term meat wave or meat assault, they get piled on. Like that's not a thing.

[00:02:11]That doesn't exist. You've seen the footage, right, of just individual Russians, one, two, three at a time crossing open terrain trying to dodge Ukrainian drones and they're all getting killed or wounded. And we've got accounts from Russians that are captured talking about the the losses that they suffer in trying to do that. Like, it's not a surprise anymore. And we have for a long time had major Russian accounts referring to these as meat assaults.

[00:02:33]It's not anything new. We we've been seeing it for a while now. Girkin's frustration is they're continuing to do that and they're about they're on the verge of losing everything they might have gained in the last year. Russian progress across the front has been very very minimal. And in some of these areas, what we've seen is they've just moved into a gray zone and they've got kind of individual scattered Russian soldiers throughout Ukraine for about really started back in Dopilia uh in August of last year. Started conducting these localized counterattacks, moving through and clearing out those areas that Russia claimed control over, but realistically was a dozen Russians hidden in basement across, you know, four square kilometers.

[00:03:11]That's happening here. Girkin is frustrated because they continue to throw bodies at this problem and they are losing everything that they gained over the course of the last year. Now again, this is largely Ukraine cleaning up, kind of mopping up the gray area, but it's reversing all of those gains.

[00:03:27]Now, turning to the second one here, we've got Alex Parker returns. This is another Russian mailblogger complaining about the situation a little further east in Leman. He says the surrender of Yampole and Deprona near Leman has begun under the stories of the drunken commander Garassimov that 80% of Leman is under our control. The Ukrainians are conducting successful counterattacks and are currently trying to cut off the salient at Leman which will lead to an encirclement and a repeat of the disaster like in Kian where all of the advanced assault and consolidation groups are killed and the city was lost despite the stories of its liberation.

[00:04:01]Damn it, the results. We'll pull up uh Le Man here on the map as well, a little bit further east. And this follows a uh report from the Russian Ministry of Defense last weekend where they just made stuff up. I mean, we we made an entire video about it. I think it was called like five Russian lies. They just threw things out there that did not line up with the reality on the ground. And it was weird. We've already got multiple Russian accounts pushing back on those saying that's not reality. What are you doing? You're making things difficult.

[00:04:31]This one I think is probably a little bit premature, but we'll see how it goes. What Alex Parker is talking about here is this is Lemon and this is the area the grass mob last week said like 80% is under the control of Russian forces. Does not line up with reality at all. There are battles going on on the outskirts of the town. Um my understanding is there may have been some infiltrations of Russians making their way into the town itself, but to say 80% is controlled by Russia is just fantasy. What Alex Parker's getting frustrated with is he's saying that they're starting to see uh Ukrainian forces cut off this forward group.

[00:05:05]Again, comparing it to uh the issue up at Kian where about a year ago, Russia claimed control over that entire city.

[00:05:12]Putin said international media come in here and see for yourselves. And the entire time Ukraine was kind of setting a trap to cut off the Russian forces and and kind of eliminate them once they were isolated in that pocket. According to Alex Parker Returns, and I just want to stress, I think he's a little premature on this one. I don't know that we're on the verge of seeing like some major Ukrainian offensive operation here. We'll see. But according to Alex Parker Returns, this is another Kian being set up for no reason. The Russian Ministry of Defense didn't have to do this. They chose to. Now, the next one we're going to get into here is a uh kind of a hardcore Russia supporter that has fundraised a ton of money for Russian soldiers from the start of the war. and he says that it doesn't look like Russia is going to meet their original war aims. Maybe they should just pack it in. Pretty crazy all things considered. But before we get into that, a quick thank you to the sponsor of today's video, ground news. So with Iran still causing pretty significant disruptions in the straight of Hormuz, something else just happened that barely made a splash. Recent reports show that Iranian aligned forces seized a chinyl linked Honduran flagged vessel, a floating armory used by private maritime security firms. This is big news and it was boarded at anchor off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and diverted towards Iranian territorial waters, adding yet another flash point in this already volatile corridor. Now, I found this story on Ground News, the sponsor of today's video. Ground News is a website and app that pulls together thousands of news stories daily, organizing them by story and showing each source's political bias, reliability, and ownership. Now, this specific story has been covered by over 200 different outlets with coverage pretty evenly split across the political spectrum. But depending where you look, those perspectives can be different. For instance, Harets, a left-leaning outlet, frames this more as part of broader regional instability, whereas NDTV, a right-leaning outlet, just calls out Iran. It says Iran is responsible for seizing this ship. Same story, completely different framing, which is why I use ground news. Now, one feature I keep coming back to is called Blind Spot. It shows you stories mostly covered or entirely covered by one side of the political spectrum. I mean, no matter where you sit politically, you're getting a filtered version of reality.

[00:07:19]And Ground News helps you to see what you're missing. So, go to ground.news/preston or scan the QR code on the screen for 40% off the Vantage Unlimited Access Plan. That's the same plan that I use.

[00:07:31]Again, subscribe today at ground.news/preston.

[00:07:34]That link will be in the pin comment and description below. And thank you so much to Ground News for sponsoring today's video. All right, so shifting over to two majors. We quote him an awful lot on this channel. One of the biggest fundraisers for the Russian military today. He started to complain about how uh the the war aims may not actually be uh achievable as they were first laid out. He said, quote, "In 2022, clear phrases were heard about the fact that the goals and the tasks of the special military operation would be fully accomplished. However, for understandable reasons, these goals have now narrowed down to the liberation of Daetsk. our people are dying on the front every day and we'd like this to stop. We'll sign the book about the achievements of the war's goals and retire. And he wraps up by saying, "We can't actually do that because uh the threat would still remain." He poses that Ukraine is a significant threat to Russia outside of wartime. So he ends by saying, quote, "The war will be long." I don't know that I've seen any Russian We'll pull uh go back to a map here to show you the area he's talking about. I don't know that I've seen any major Russian mil bloggers throughout the conflict talk about how maybe we won't be able to achieve our original aims or even talking about how the war aims have changed since the beginning. And at the very least you're talking about a neutral Ukraine, the demilitarization, the dennazification of Ukraine uh and then Russian control over Daesk Zaparisia Heron and Crimea. And what he's saying is all of those are out.

[00:08:59]We're just going to take Daesk. I'm not even sure that's possible. I mean, we got a note earlier today that is pulled up the map and then didn't talk to it.

[00:09:06]So, this is the area here. This is what remains of Daets. Uh, and it it's a fortress belt. I'm just not sure that Russia has what it takes. I mean, I I feel like it could break their country.

[00:09:17]The the number of casualties that it would require to move through the rest of Dopilia to actually take not just Constantine, but Kromators, Slovian, Leman, like that's that's a lot. It's a lot of death that they'd be uh they'd be dealing with in order to take this. But two majors now saying that's kind of the only remaining war aim is just this. And we just got reports earlier today that negotiations have fallen through between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine.

[00:09:43]Honestly, I didn't even know there was anything realistically going on in that regard. Kind of felt like it fell apart a long time ago. But one of the means that Russia is trying to go about securing Daetsk, and you'll remember that is constantly brought up in the negotiations. Just last week, I think they said hand over Daesk or move all of your military personnel out of that and then we can talk. So that's kind of the the way that Russia is trying to take this territory. And as of today, I think it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the negotiations are no longer ongoing. So Russia's war aims are narrowing, narrowing, narrowing again according to a major Russian mil blogger uh two majors. Now the fourth one here, a little more current. This is a topic we've talked about pretty regularly over the course of the last couple weeks.

[00:10:25]We've seen a lot well we got more overnight actually these Ukrainian deep strikes going against Russian logistics you know all around the territory but specifically along the sea of Azov between Marople Berdans and down into Crimea. So overnight as we saw a number of additional strikes carried out 200 plus kilometers from the front line um we saw an announcement from Russian media from uh from government officials shutting down certain portions of that road small portions and restricting the movement. So we've got Russian media Rybar here complaining about that saying you guys just made the job for Ukraine even easier. He said, quote, "Heavy trucks will have restricted movement except for military cargo, special cargo, medicines, equipment for infrastructure restoration, fuel, perishable food products, and certainly important in certain important essential food items." In other words, they literally made the enemy's life easier in finding and striking targets.

[00:11:21]Ukrainian channels are already celebrating this. Now, Ukrainian drone operators can attack literally any truck. After all, according to the decree, any heavy tonnage vehicle will now be carrying something important.

[00:11:34]Now, the area they're talking about here, we'll pull up uh back to the map, is this area along the road. There's a small section, I want to say right here uh in Haron that has been shut down, but they're that is what they're turning to for uh the ways of protecting transport along this this road. Not drone nets, not anti- drone teams or mobile counter drone teams. They're just saying civilians can't use it at all. It's only used for military purposes. Then we have Russian mil blogger Romanov here equally upset saying quote in fact instead of ensuring the security of the land corridor of Crimea we've blocked it for now only cargo transport. Should we say that these actions fully coincide with the enemy's goals. Now what's interesting here I think and what kind of stood out to me is we do see push back and we do see criticism from inside of Russia. It's limited and very calculated in a lot of ways, but there's there's a little bit of room for that to happen and we tend to see it kind of come in waves, but it's always focused around a singular event, right? So, when Cubiance fell, for instance, and Russia was no longer able to hold on in that region, we did see a lot of push back across different Russian channels, but it was one item. It was one thing they were all upset about. What we're seeing in the last couple days is these very prominent uh mill bloggers with significant reach and and generally pretty good insights into what's happening in the war are getting individually frustrated about a bunch of different things. And I just tried to narrow it down to show like one thing from Girkin. But I've got multiple mill bloggers upset about the lack of progress and how Ukraine is retaking territory. We've got multiple mill bloggers frustrated about the fake reports in the east. We've got multiple accounts frustrated about how the initial war aims are not on track to be accomplished and how the uh the negotiations are falling apart and multiple mill bloggers livid in the last 24 hours about the lack of protection along the road from uh from Rostov to Crimea.

[00:13:27]Something is changing. Something is different here. We'll see what this actually results in, but it it stands out. So, I felt like it was worth worth bringing up. Now, quick update on the fundraiser. We just delivered our 13th vehicle to the uh Saraphims battalion in the 104th territorial defense brigade.

[00:13:43]That's 13 vehicles that you all have provided in like 3 months. That's insane. This is a year-long campaign. We teamed up with the Sarapimins. It's a drone unit in the 104th Territorial Defense Brigade. Uh they came to us asking for help to kind of outfit the entire battalion, and that's what we're doing. And we're well on our way at this point. Uh now, I'm going to play a video here from the Saraphims. It shows what they use these trucks for, for infill, x-fill, to to help get casualties off the battlefield, drop off supplies with guys that are forward. I did see some comments recently uh about where you can find this footage and take it uh download it and and share it around because I think it does a really good job of showing just how chaotic the battlefield is right now and how important these pickup trucks are for uh for soldier for the soldier survival at and near the front. So, what I'll have in the description below is not just the uh the campaign page where you can see how this fundraiser is going, but also links to this video. Uh we'll have it on Instagram and X. I think that might have been the only places I published it.

[00:14:41]Everywhere I published it, we're going to have it linked in the description below so you can download it and share it uh as as you wish. But that's all we got for now. Thanks for watching and I'll see youall next time.