Russian parliament defense committee chief to military: 'Stop lying' about Ukraine losses
Opinion by Tom Rogan - 30m ago





Russian forces are retreating on both the eastern and southern Ukrainian fronts. Russian forces around the southern city of Kherson, the Dnieper River-bordering gateway to Crimea and the Sea of Azov, face an especially critical situation. Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon have to choose between a full-scale retreat or the Hail Mary employment of nuclear weapons.

Even Putin's top supporters recognize that Russia has a big problem.

Take the chairman of the Russian parliament's defense committee, Andrey Kartapolov. A retired top-ranking military officer who previously commanded the Western Military District (which has operational responsibility for areas of Ukraine outside of Crimea), Kartapolov was parachuted into the Duma last September as a reward for his loyalty. But Kartapolov offered no spin on Wednesday. "We need to stop lying," he said on a prime-time state TV show. Condemning the defense ministry's rose-tinted reporting on the war in Ukraine, Kartapolov explained that the country's credibility was being undermined by the public's awareness of major losses. "The people know, our people are not stupid," he said. This is a marked change from Kartapolov's rhetoric in April, when he proclaimed that the war would lead to a majestic shift in "world order."

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