The Huskar Social Union wrote:Institute for the Study of WarKremlin-affiliated milbloggers are acknowledging significant Ukrainian successes in the Kupyansk direction and criticizing the Kremlin and the Russian military command for providing false battlefield reports. ⬇️
The widespread milblogger criticism of the Kremlin’s and the Russian military command’s false and exaggerated claims in Kupyansk further exposes how the ongoing Russian cognitive warfare effort, which aims to paint Ukrainian defenses as on the verge of collapse and major Russian battlefield victories as inevitable, does not reflect the battlefield realities.
Russian milbloggers also acknowledged that Russia’s failures in Kupyansk indicate that Russia does not have sufficient manpower or materiel to imminently defeat the northern part of the Fortress Belt while simultaneously continuing offensive operations elsewhere.
ISW recently assessed that Russian forces will likely continue to struggle to maintain the Kremlin’s desired multi-pronged offensives in different directions due to the long-term materiel and manpower costs of these simultaneous operations.
Russian efforts to start the battle for the Fortress Belt will likely further stretch Russian resources, and Russia will likely need to deprioritize other frontline sectors in order to concentrate even more forces to the Fortress Belt area.
The Kremlin is therefore making demands in negotiations that Ukraine cede the unoccupied parts of Donetsk Oblast, likely in order to save Russia the personnel and materiel resources and possibly to put Russia in a more advantageous position to re-invade in the future to pursue Putin’s longer-term strategic goal of controlling all of Ukraine.
I've only been saying it for the last year.
