The attack on the Crimean Bridge, coupled with recent Russian military setbacks and partial mobilization, led to direct criticism of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Nationalist Russians and military bloggers have criticized the Russian president for failing to analyze important events candidly.
Putin reproaches him for constantly ignoring such important incidents. This is what experts from the American Institute for the Study of War say.
Direct criticism of Putin by Russians is almost unprecedented
Among the events that Putin openly ignored:
- the sinking of the cruiser Moskva,
- the exchange of captured Azovstal fighters, whom the Kremlin constantly demonized after the Battle of Mariupol,
- Krymsky bridge strike.
Some Russian military bloggers have said that Putin should avenge the Crimean bridge explosion so that his silence is not seen as a “weakness”. Those Russians who do not condemn Putin criticize the silence of Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Russian Security Council, after the explosion.
Direct criticism of Putin by this society is almost unprecedented. Military bloggers and other nationalist figures continue to express full support for Putin's goals in Ukraine and have so far blamed the failures and failures on the Russian military command or the Russian Ministry of Defense, the ISW noted.
Russians do not believe that Putin will achieve his goal in Ukraine
This criticism from the camp that favors Russia's invasion of Ukraine may indicate growing doubts about Putin's ability to achieve his promised goal of “denazification.” Putin's stated goals for the invasion, which he launched on February 24, resonated deeply with the nationalist community firmly supporting the ideology of Russia's historical and cultural superiority and the right to control the territories of the former Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.
Russians' dissatisfaction with Putin's inability to enforce his own “red lines” is that he failed to properly create the information conditions before a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Prior to the invasion, Putin defined “red lines” as:
- NATO expansion,
- Ukraine's supply of strategic weapons systems, including systems capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
But he has not publicly corrected these “red lines” since the invasion began. Thus, military bloggers clung to the “red lines” announced by Medvedev, which Putin did not publicly confirm, the specialists' report says.
At the same time, they added that the Kremlin left room for confusion from the very beginning regarding his own vision of the war.
What Putin said about the explosions on the Crimean bridge
The President of Russia reacted to the incident 2 days after the explosions. He blamed the Ukrainian special services for the explosion of the Crimean bridge. Moreover, he called it a “terrorist attack” aimed at destroying Russia's critical infrastructure, although Crimea is an occupied part of Ukraine.
At the same time, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the President's Office, stressed that such a reaction is too cynical even for Russia. He recalled the 12 rockets fired at Zaporozhye at night and stressed that there is only one terrorist state here. The whole world knows that this is Russia.
Russia has been shelling the center of Zaporozhye with rockets for several days in a row. Enemy shells fly right into residential buildings, civilians die.
