A Russian analyst has echoed the somber feelings of others following Ukraine’s recapture of the town of Lyman in a powerful counteroffensive, warning Moscow is facing a “critical situation”.
Boris Rozhin, a Crimea-based Russian war blogger, posted an update on the Russian effort on his Telegram account on Sunday. As reported by Francis Scarr, a journalist covering Russian media for the BBC, his summary of the current situation was bleak, noting that Ukrainian forces are pressuring their positions near two southern regions.
“In the evening of October 2, the situation in the direction of Nikopol deteriorated,” wrote Rozhin, translated by Google. “The enemy is advancing south on Berislav via the Golden Balka. The situation may become critical in the near future.”
Nikopol is a city on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, near the borders of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday announced the annexation of the two regions as well as Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, despite increasing losses in Ukraine. Berislav is located in Kherson, downstream from Nikopol.
Something is also happening in southern Ukraine
Russian war blogger Boris Rozhin says the situation in the Nikopol area has “deteriorated” today.
“The enemy is attacking south towards Beryslav via Zolota Balka. The situation may become critical very soon”https://t.co/jPbVLhRMTi
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) October 2, 2022
In another post on Sunday, Rozhin said that Ukrainian forces have “a significant numerical superiority in manpower” and that “fighting will continue along the entire line of contact” as their army pushes further south.
On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that its troops have withdrawn from Lyman, a city in the Donetsk region that the country’s armed forces had been using as a transport and logistics center. It was one of the most significant successes of the Ukrainian military in repelling the invaders and was met with ridicule and criticism from Russian media representatives.
“The Russian information space — consisting of Kremlin propagandists, pundits and milbloggers — registered the defeat as a result of the Russian military command’s failure to send reinforcements in a timely manner, while openly criticizing repeated bureaucratic errors during the mobilization,” read a report on Saturday from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Similar sentiments were shared by Andrey Gurulyov, a politician and former military commander, on a Russian state news channel on Saturday. Gurulyov accused Russian army leaders of preventing the dispatch of sufficient reinforcements for Lyman by submitting consistently positive reports to make it appear that things were going well.
Above is a shot of the destruction in the Ukrainian city of Lyman at the start of the invasion. A Russian analyst has predicted a “bleak situation” for the Russian armed forces as Ukrainian troops continue to play for advantage. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
“I honestly can’t understand why after all this time they couldn’t properly assess the situation, why they didn’t make a decision to reinforce the group that Lyman was defending,” Gurulyov said. “No matter how heroically they fought, there is an elementary calculation of military capability that will show whether or not Lyman could be held. The problem we have is the constant delivery of good reports, or you can also call it constant lying. This system doesn’t go bottom-up, but top-down.”
Newsweek reached out to Russian officials for comment.