Putin facing crisis of support as Kremlin 'propagandists' admit war can't be won

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]bloggers uh uh the journalist and bloggers and propagandists report mainly reporting from uh the front line uh they are much more explicit and they are saying that Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing for a lot of um weeks uh judging from what is happening on the ground judging from what military are saying judging from how Russia is incapable to uh stop Ukrainian Ian attacks inside in strikes inside Russia, deep inside Russia. Uh and and judging from also the what the Russian public opinion is starting to think there is no m uh much optimism, there is no much support for the war. There is a lot of uh even in the Putin supporters uh uh camp there is a lot of disappointment.

[00:01:00]>> Hello everyone. I'm Amy Kellogg. Welcome to Front Line. My guest today is Anna Zesa, author, journalist, and internationally renowned Russia expert and Russia watcher. Anna uh we've seen one of the worst aerial attacks of this war to date in Kiev over the weekend. Uh Russia having fired ballistic and cruise missiles, 600 drones, but most significantly some of those hypersonic archnic missiles. What can you say about uh the scope of the damage as you understand it?

[00:01:37]Well, um, what strikes me is the the difference between the power, how powerful, how cruel and brutal this attack was and how little military um targets it hit it. It there were a commercial mall, a lot of residential buildings, uh, a parking lot, museums.

[00:02:04]uh the center of K was hit very hard. Um a a farmer market. So it was uh not so much a military aimed attack as a an intimidation a kind of psychological attack to say uh to send the message to the Ukrainians.

[00:02:31]You don't don't think you can get away with it. Uh we were uh fortunately the count of victims was very very low also because uh uh Ukrainian air defense were very good. So we have uh only four people killed and some dozens uh uh wounded. Uh but uh the uh devastation is huge. Uh and I think it was it was a clear message from the Kremlin to message of intimidation, a message of uh then I will not let you go. You will not uh you will not have a life. You cannot get away with it.

[00:03:19]>> Yeah. The foreign minister Andre Siba said that the strike was meant to demonstrate strength but it confirms weakness and even Russians see that he is a loser.

[00:03:32]Um uh I agree. I think it's it was a kind of frustration uh strike because if you think what uh efficiency uh Ukrainian strikes inside Russia deliver with much less uh weapon power. Uh it I I think this this kind of uh bombing was uh uh uh Russians started it to to uh show strength which is strength in the Russian uh way of see world view.

[00:04:11]You are strong if you bomb if you are brutal if you if you uh if people is afraid of you. So it um it uh in the last weeks a lot of even of uh a lot of Putin supporters uh said and wrote that Putin was weak that the Ukrainians were striking every day inside Russia. Putin could nothing about it that the Russian army in on the front line on um on the ground was stuck which is which is all true. And so Putin needed to show he was strong in the way he intends to be strong. So uh to be able to kill, to be able to bomb.

[00:05:02]>> Yeah. You were saying when we spoke last week that Zahar Prelin, who's one of the propaganda misters in Russia, one of the pro proin uh writers, said that Ukraine could even win this war.

[00:05:18]Yes, when we hear these kind of statements from people like Zahar Prep who is a novelist, a very well-known novelist and is also one of the top Russian propagandonist, a guy who enrolled as a volunteer in 2014 in the first invasion of Donas who claimed that he killed more Ukrainians than anybody else. So not exactly the the dove type and uh he he wrote he was also the Putin's testimonial in his constitutional referendum and so on. So it's a very important uh person and he wrote that Ukraine can win or and can that Russia start to not win didn't say the word lose but not win the war and we are speaking um of a very high ranking institutional propagandist if you go lower to the soal it uh that bloggers uh the journalist bloggers and propagandist report mainly reporting from uh the front line. uh they are much more explicit and they are saying that Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing for uh for a lot of um weeks. Uh judging from what is happening on the ground, judging from what military are saying, judging from how Russia is incapable to uh stop Ukrainian attacks inside in strikes inside Russia, deep inside Russia. uh and and judging from also the what the uh Russian public opinion is starting to think there is no m uh much optimism there is not much support for the war there is a lot of uh even in the Putin supporters uh uh camp there is a lot of disappointment >> you know on um obviously the most important thing is human life and we've seen a lot of that lost in this war on both sides but and people's psychological state but there was also in Medusa this morning a list of cultural monuments that had been damaged in this these strikes over the weekend a memorial to the Chernobyl firefighters the national art museum in Kiev the Philarmonic which apparently was one of the only buildings on the kadeshhatic to survive world War II. I mean, I guess it's important just to always remind people of the sheer scope of loss, isn't it?

[00:08:06]>> Yes. It's um it's of course it's um that's that's what strikes me that it's not only about war hitting I don't know infrastructure, air, airfields, um barracks. It's uh it's it's about hitting the people. It's about uh trying to broke an a a nation, a city. Uh it's about bring desperation because uh you don't need to hit a theater or an opera house uh for military reasons especially if you are saying that the Ukrainians are brothers that we are the same people that Ukrainians were just um imprisoned by neo-Nazis and they are uh they can't wait to be liberated by by Russians.

[00:09:03]Why are you doing this? Um so so I uh I think this again this strike was really it was full of frustration was like if you are winning if you are doing better I will it's like I don't know like scratching your car if I can can buy a car beautiful like yours I can at least ruin it. So uh um so to ruin your life it's that I feel a a great a great deal of frustration in this in this intention to bomb culture uh institutions uh uh to ruin to ruin the everyday life because ke against uh all the uh bombings and raids and everything after 4 and a half years of war Ke still lived it life in ke when you don't have a ke you have I don't know you have bars opening and book fairs and uh theater shows they just adjusted to the curfew so opera show starts in the afternoon so if it's going to be interrupt by air strike you can then con conclude it but uh after people go comes back from the um airbomb shelters but still it's a it's a big city and it's a city which tries uh works uh have fun and it's something that clearly this attack was uh trying to disrupt.

[00:10:49]>> Yeah. I mean that is the Ukrainian superpower as we've seen it. their their resistance and their ability not just to fight back but to try to reclaim their joy and continue life as best they can.

[00:11:04]Um Anna, we also spoke recently about how Ukraine has reclaimed the initiative in in the sense that was what its military brass were saying anyway and they have started to take back some territory but they've also started to really hit deeply into Russia. uh refineries largely infrastructure occasionally there is there has been a hit on a residential compound maybe something in Lugansk over the weekend that that might have been a dormatory but generally they've been going after infrastructure unlike Russia which has been going after these civilian and softer targets as well but if Ukraine has reclaimed the initiative what does what does that really mean in the bigger picture >> in the bigger picture. It's uh the aim of the war for Ukrainians because of course Ukrainians are um fully conscious. They cannot they don't have the power uh to reclaim uh their territory uh occupied by Russia's uh kilometer after kilometer. Uh they uh the this uh they um aim is to to provoke a crisis to uh push back Russian forces uh hard enough to create a a military and political crisis inside Russia. sort of an economic crisis of course because you also have the the other front line of the sanctions the western sanctions and the so-called Ukrainian sanctions as the Lansky called them I mean the the strikes against the mostly refiner refiner oil refineries um as uh so the uh the goal is to uh force Putin to stop force Putin to retreat so uh to uh force Putin to not be able anymore to wage this war. Uh saw to inflict him heavy human losses. uh sought to uh um uh hit his economy and sought to especially to uh shatter the the consent uh of the Russian public opinion for for this war to push not only ordinary people but also oligarchs Putin's uh power system to say okay that's that's enough that's it Let's let's look for an exit strategy. Let's talk. Let's uh uh find some kind of compromise. But uh we are done. That's that's the the real goal.

[00:14:00]Yeah. Uh his popularity and polls are not very reliable, but his popularity is going down. You mentioned to me the other day that interestingly enough, it's not opposition figures like what's left of the Nalli group or others who are stridently anti-war. It is this kind of brigade of of influencers and beauty bloggers who have started to chip away at the system not criticizing war but really taking taking jabs at the Kremlin.

[00:14:39]>> Yes. Yeah. It's a very interesting phenomenon because uh uh Putin was successful at uh shutting down the the real opposition the descent uh uh uh jailing people or censoring people or pushing them into exile. So uh now in Russia you uh don't have uh the uh opportunity to speak up against Kremlin uh in a political way. So you you don't have a real parliament, you don't have the freedom of the speech, freedom of the press, you don't have the freedom of assembly. You can go out in the streets.

[00:15:18]But still, even the dictatorship uh if there is um a protest, it finds it it way out.

[00:15:29]And so now we are uh watching uh sometimes in with a little some disbelief. is uh uh beauty bloggers for example like the most famous the Victoria Bona which has certain millions followers on Instagram teaching how to paint uh your lips or lose your weight and and selling her beauty products.

[00:15:53]She's living in Monte Carlo. She's uh this last day she was posting uh reals of herself in K. She was uh she g went to the film festival wearing uh wonderful luxury very gorgeous dresses.

[00:16:15]So she's a rich, beautiful and very uh successful woman in the Putin's world.

[00:16:22]She's a self-made uh girl. She comes from a Russian deep Russian province. She's a uh comes from a very poor family in Siberia. She started with uh she she she worked she went to Moscow, she worked at I don't know as a waiter and um then she be she went to a reality show and then then she became a real a real star. So she in a way she's an icon of the it's a Putinism success story. uh she's rich, she's vulgar, uh she's uh um she she's a role model for a lot of Russian women and girls. And she started to spoke against Putin in some point saying speaking not about the war also because speaking about about the war, criticizing the war is a criminal offense in Russia. So you can do it. But she started to speak about different uh a lot of other different things like I don't know the slaughtering of the uh cattle in Siberia and uh uh the fluid in Dagistan and the inflation and uh internet blackouts in the big Russian cities which are war because of course it internet been shutting down to prevent uh Ukrainian drones from flying. But uh uh how to speak about the war without mention the war. A lot of people starts to do it for uh we have also I don't know rappers because all the big most famous Russian rappers are of course uh uh opposition people as rappers usually are. So they are in exile. But there are also uh propooty rappers like this goof who after uh after a lot of years where he was rapping for Putin for so uh Moscow's mayor Soan and so on. So he was a very loyal rapper and he released a track saying I want all this to stop. I don't want the ballots to fly over my head anymore. I want I want peace. And again this is something very uh very important because uh these uh all all these people try to uh live in Russia uh or outside Russia but trying to uh live as the world was in in some other place as the as as Ukraine wasn't existing as as it was anything good as usual and it's not good anymore because you can't hide anymore from the war because drones are flying over Moscow because uh in Crimea you uh they can't find uh uh gasoline anymore because uh oil refineries were bombed by Ukrainians uh because a lot of people uh died and because you cannot find uh uh uh Kremlin is struggling uh finding uh new soldiers. anymore even paying them. So, uh a lot of people are afraid that a new mobilization will started. Puty will will start to call to war uh people uh not as volunteers but as co conscripted and uh and you see that a lot of Russians don't want this war anymore and they are start started to speak up in different ways but they are starting to speak up and then you see that it's been more than more than a month that uh uh uh poll center published uh the last Putin's uh popularity polls. The last was out on uh uh uh in in the middle of April and we don't see new figures maybe because these numbers are not so nice.

[00:20:32]We saw some viral video the other day an uh of Putin trying to say URA URA to cheer on Russia and and he couldn't really say it. Did what what did you make of that?

[00:20:47]>> I don't know. I'm always um I'm I try to avoid any speculation on his health because I'm not a doctor and I think that even a professional uh medicine doctor can't have daniel him on on a TV screen. But surely something doesn't doesn't work well with this man.

[00:21:11]I don't know if he's unwell or just I don't know depressed or something. But uh what I can say for sure that he's not uh uh sticking to reality anymore because uh when he's saying that Ukrainian army is on the verge of a catastrophe of course in it can be propaganda but it if he's saying this knowing that it's not true it's a very stupid propaganda because when you are have have hundreds not more one two, three or a dozen of drones but hundreds of drones flying over your cities every every night or almost every night. You cannot say anymore uh these blatant lies because every Russian knows that Ukrainian army is not on the verge of catastrophe. may be quite the opposite.

[00:22:10]>> And it seems that the military cooperation which was withdrawn from the US, in other words, they stopped sending weaponry just like that maybe is compensated maybe by the intelligence sharing which did tip Ukraine off to the uh archnic attack this weekend. How do you see cooperation?

[00:22:30]Well, I think from what I know, from what I I see, I think that corporation is still going on is it it changed uh the its form because there is no more assistance for free. It's not aid anymore. uh and Trump administration is selling weapons to uh Ukrainians, but they uh they they do this uh all the uh military assistance that uh was uh that started under Biden administrations from what I know. So from the Ukrainian side reached Ukraine even after uh uh Biden was gone. So Trump administration keep it stick to these obligations and uh but now this free assistant is running is running out because uh it's it's running out and there are new packages which are paid by uh by Europeans but uh still uh uh US arms are have been sent to Ukraine but then we have of course we have intelligence because Ukrainians would not be able to it to strike Russia and to strike Russia with so high pre precision uh raids without satellite information and uh of course Europeans also have uh intelligence but I think it's mostly it's mostly American and another uh circumstances is that uh Ukrainians are hitting uh deep inside Russia and uh uh and and nobody's saying nothing. So I think that at some point uh European but also American uh Americans told Ukrainians, okay, go on and strike because we we all know that there was uh Ukrainians not only don't didn't have enough uh missiles to strike deep uh long range missiles to strike deep inside Russia, but there was also uh a a kind of political ban to do it because especially Donald Trump was really afraid to anger Putin to uh uh disrupt the negotiations that were uh on that seem to be on the way with Russia.

[00:24:52]So for Trump it was dumb bomb now because otherwise Putin would get angry and will end the negotiations. Now, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state of the United States uh declared last week that the negotiations are uh started that they are that were they were put on hold. There are no negotiations quite right now because Rubio said we are done with this uh long and useless talks. And then he said uh we will resume the negotiations if and when the dynamic will change. What did he means for the dynamic the dynamic on the ground? Of course something that will push Putin to say okay let's talk. I'm not asking for the whole of Dumbbas anymore. I'm I'm ready to talk. I'm ready to talk and I'm ready to compromise and not just keeping uh keep asking what I want uh without without considering considering nothing because negotiations are about compromise even unpleasant compromise are not about repeating uh the same the same requests totally unrealistical request to the to the other side. No. Um I think uh I think that Americans uh that something changed also in Washington because the way Ukrainians are acting. Yes, of course Ukrainians are using their own weapons. They started to develop longrange missiles and drones uh from the beginning of the war and now we see the uh the results of this research and this uh industry effort. But we also know that it will be impossible without western help, without European help. A lot of cooperations are on the way also with European um uh military industry as joint ventures like the UK the one Ukrainians had with the the German red metal. uh but uh still uh I think that it doesn't matter if the missiles that are hitting now oil refineries in Siberia or in euros are branded uh UK or branded US or France or are Ukraine homemade. The point is that the West gave Ukrainian the authorization to to wage war without fear into uh Andrew Putin anymore.

[00:27:30]>> Anna, thank you very much. And we're of course seeing Ukraine helping the rest of the world with drone technology. So tables are turning, but uh obviously the path ahead is long and we will stay in touch about all of these issues. Anna, thank you so much.

[00:27:47]>> Thank you.