Russia’s rhetoric of victory is changing as Ukraine uses ‘unchangeable tactics’ | News of the Russia-Ukraine war

The very expensive gas Anatoly has been shopping in recent weeks in Moscow to destroy his white Kia engine.

“They’re low,” a taxi driver told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “The engine already sounds like a sick heart … The government allows ‘temporary reductions,’ but what will I do when I need new replacement parts” that are not available because of white sanctions, he asked sarcastically.

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Anatoly was angered by the Kremlin’s military crackdown and Ukraine’s near-daily strikes on Russian oil refineries and oil depots that have led to gas shortages across the country.

Ukraine “got us right. They don’t knock, they kick the door,” said the 49-year-old, who had a three-day hangover and bloodshot eyes.

Russian military officials have not commented on the violence in Ukraine.

But even the Kremlin’s most loyal supporters have it has been changed their previous hit song.

“We have to prepare for difficulties and make sacrifices,” said Vladimir Solovyov, host of Rossiya 1 television, in mid-June.

Solovyov has a lot of enthusiasm, loud monologues and military clothes. He once urged the Kremlin to “empty” Ukrainian cities of nuclear weapons and said Kyiv and its Western allies “serve the prince of darkness.”

Military bloggers tend to be more pessimistic as they approach the front lines.

One of them, Prizrak Novorossii (Spirit of New Russia), wrote on Telegram at the end of June that the Kremlin should carry out a massive mobilization campaign because the Russian people “already see the great changes and disasters that can happen due to, to put it mildly, a bad evolution of weapons.”

The reason is simple – the Ukrainian extremists use “a very visible method of combating long-range drones with technological solutions that Russia is only getting,” he wrote.

“So, the question is not whether to mobilize people, but how to do it,” the blogger concluded, adding that recent events “inspire a little optimism.”

‘I’m afraid my son will be hired’

Gathering people scares many women.

“I’m afraid my son will be drafted, but we don’t have the money to send him abroad,” Kseniya, a mother of two from the western city of Tula, told Al Jazeera.

She withheld her last name and personal information for security reasons.

“We have been told many times that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin brought stability, and instead, we see total chaos.

He is furious with Putin’s response to the gas shortage and the attack on Ukraine.

“We see some shortage (of gas), but it is not necessary,” Putin said in a televised speech on June 28. “There is damage, but all the affected areas are being restored very quickly, and the resulting problems are not serious.”

Acknowledging Ukraine’s power, he said drone attacks “cause problems, that’s obvious”.

Military analysts say the Kremlin appears to have bet on the wrong horse, with Western sanctions trying to boost production of new weapons.

Moscow he put mainly in the production of drones, especially the continuously updated Iranian-made Shahed models, and Iskander missiles.

“It’s something that makes it painful for Ukraine, but it won’t destroy Russia’s rear defense,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany, told Al Jazeera.

‘Good strike in Ukraine will continue’

Russia seems to be retaliating; This week their attacks have killed many people in Ukraine, including the capital.

The Iskander exploded meters away from Vitaly Yarokhno’s apartment in central Kyiv at 2:27 am on Thursday.

Yarokhno knows the exact time because a shard of glass broke and stopped the clock on his wall – and another bullet-like fragment sat next to it.

The blast destroyed all the windows and most of the furniture in his two-room house, while his two cars parked under his porch caught fire and exploded.

But Yarokhno, his wife and son escaped with minor wounds and whippings. He wondered aloud about Russia’s intentions.

“I still don’t understand why they use Iskanders to attack civilians,” the tall, 43-year-old told Al Jazeera.

Moscow’s reliance on Iskanders and other missiles was misplaced, analyst Mitrokhin said.

In order to completely shut down Ukraine’s medium and long-range drones, the Kremlin had to invest in the production of the Pantsir anti-aircraft system.

They rely on multi-range radars and thermal imaging and fire-guided missiles for long-range and short-range anti-tank missiles.

Some of Russia’s anti-aircraft defenses are immune to Ukrainian threats because they are designed to shoot down Cold War-era missiles — not low-flying, low-flying drones.

Russia currently needs at least 6,000 Pantsirs systems with trained personnel and enough missiles to form three air defense zones along a 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) front line, Russia’s border with Ukraine and its Black Sea coast, Mitrokhin said.

“But there is none, and none will appear anytime soon,” he said. “Which means the good Ukrainian protests will continue.”

Moscow also has no equivalent of Starlink, the satellite modems developed by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, to enable drones on Ukrainian highways to be piloted manually at distances of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from their users, he said.

Western sanctions also prevent Russia from ramping up its weapons production, while its response to the threat to Ukraine is being delayed because it “slowed down the enemy,” he said.

The military destruction of Moscow was accompanied by economic and political collapse.

As it faces budget cuts and an economic crisis, Russia’s fight against the opposition continues and public discontent grows.

“One can compare the recent events to a spring that must either loosen or break,” Russian economist Vyacheslav Inozemtsev, a Kremlin critic, wrote in the Telegraph on Thursday.

Russia’s ‘dangers’ stem from ‘weaknesses’

Some observers say that Russia’s problems stem from its reckless, inflexible and heavy-handed approach that has lost the revolutionary struggle to Ukraine’s democratic processes.

Ukraine’s “republican culture with a strong civil partnership is fighting against (Russia’s) authoritarian, authoritarian culture that is also using domestic policies against censorship,” said Pavel Luzin, a military expert at the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank in Washington, DC.

“Russia can still learn lessons, but it has problems implementing what it is learning,” he told Al Jazeera.

Moscow can focus on what it has to deal with other priorities, but its approach lacks the flexibility of Ukraine’s approach, he said.

This is why Moscow’s reliance on missile strikes only emphasizes its military losses.

Luzin said: “Russia’s terrorist tactics are based on its great weakness in organization, intelligence, technology and technology.